Lanthanum to lower phosphate in rocks outside of aquarium

[kenchilada]

New idea?

- get 50 pounds of temporary rock (dry or live if I can find with low PO4) and cycle it, get it to zero phosphate
- remove all rock from display and put in a 75G stock tank
- huge water change on display (to dilute PO4), then put the 50 pounds temporary rock into the display
- blast trash cans with strong lanthanum drip and high flow
- when old rock hits 0ppm phosphate, give display a good cleaning, swap old rock back in

Thoughts?

edit: kind of stupid to even bother with new rock, I could just run a large sponge filter or something while I treat the existing rock outside of my display

 

[kenchilada]

If you still want to lower it, then GFO might be the best bet.

I hadn't seriously considered it since the tank is so large and phosphate so high. I've never had a tank with over 1ppm PO4 though.

I will dig around and see if there is some sort of estimate for expected phosphate reduction per gram per gallon and see what the damage would be. Quick check on BRS... 20 pounds of GFO is $446.

Maybe more expensive than my idea above since 4L of LaCl cost me $135.

 

[EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal]

Why not try it with a few rocks like you planned to at first?

 

[kenchilada]

Why not try it with a few rocks like you planned to at first?

I have a massive furniture-grade canopy on my tank with a lot of equipment hung inside (8 bulb T5 fixture). My rock structure is attached together with acrylic rods and would be really difficult to dismantle, so I'm thinking the top has to come off. If I remove the canopy I want to do it as few times as possible.

 

[EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal]

I have a massive furniture-grade canopy on my tank with a lot of equipment hung inside (8 bulb T5 fixture). My rock structure is attached together with acrylic rods and would be really difficult to dismantle, so I'm thinking the top has to come off. If I remove the canopy I want to do it as few times as possible.

Gotcha.
Was just looking forward to the results

 

[kenchilada]

Gotcha.
Was just looking forward to the results

I think this would be similar except on a bigger scale. A 75G rubbermaid stock tank full of rock, and me dripping an extremely strong LC solution or full-strength into that.

I would try GFO but I've been unable to find any way to ballpark what that would cost. I believe it could be over $1000 to go that route.

Maybe I do need to do a smaller scale experiment first.

 

[kenchilada]

Did another experiment today. Dosed 5mL in 500mL RODI dripped over 6 hours. Sailfin tang was just as stressed as with 30mL. Interesting.

Anecdotally I believe the solution itself irritates him.

I’m getting things ready to remove the rock.

 

[|FATHOM|]

Sock clamped onto the side with a hose from powerhead and drip is a good way to do this.

If you want all of the inverts to live, then you cannot go too fast. Nobody really knows how fast is too much or anything, only that all complaints about coral and invert losses are from going too fast. I would try and not go any faster than the rock can release, so a slow and steady decline moreso than a drastic drop and then a rebound with rock unbinding. Every tank is going to be different, but you will get the hang of it once you test a few times in the beginning.

I treat rock that I get from people shutting down their tanks in bins. I use SeaKlear raw and put in quite a bit at at time - like 5-10ml. These rocks usually do not have a ton of good life on them so I go fast. It still takes a few months to get out most of the po4. I can go from flashing numbers on my Hannah to 0.10 in about a week with heavy LC dosing. You can get from 0.10 to 0.03, or so, pretty quickly too. Beyond that, it can take a week in between dosings for the po4 on the inner parts of the rocks to unbind. I recommend a good skimmer, some carbon, strong flow and a heater. Keep the rock dark - I have had coralline start to grow once the po4 got lower and I don't want to supplement calcium and carbonate in these bins.

Thanks for taking the time to write this up. When you say you dose 5-10ml at a time. You mentioned you do heavy dosing bring numbers down to 0.10 in a week and then from .10 to .03. During this time how often are you dosing the 5-10ml?

I have some seaklear from 2019. Does this stuff expire?

Thank you

 

[kenchilada]

Removed 90% of rock. Its in a 100G stock tank with 50G of new saltwater.

I’m going to wait 8 hours and test this water for phosphate. Just curious how quickly PO4 releases from the rock.

Fish are mad their territories are gone but nori peace offering was made.

 

[EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal]

Be sure you have a sufficient biofilter in the tank now that the rock is out...

Your rock looks pretty clean - how long was it in the tank?

 

[kenchilada]

I need to decide what dosage of Phosphat-E to use. Maybe I’ll just start at triple what the bottle says?

 

[Garf]

Removed 90% of rock. Its in a 100G stock tank with 50G of new saltwater.

I’m going to wait 8 hours and test this water for phosphate. Just curious how quickly PO4 releases from the rock.

Fish are mad their territories are gone but nori peace offering was made.

I can't see a power head or heater in that tub?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I have some seaklear from 2019. Does this stuff expire?

Lanthanum does not go bad.

 

[|FATHOM|]

Lanthanum does not go bad.

Perfect thank you

 

[kenchilada]

Be sure you have a sufficient biofilter in the tank now that the rock is out...

Your rock looks pretty clean - how long was it in the tank?

Plenty of rock still. Its gulf live rock from TBS, I’ve had it about five years, never been dry.

 

[kenchilada]

Interesting… the water in the tub measures 7ppm PO4 just 7 hours after the rock went in.

I’m going to start with 30mL in 1L RODI and drip that overnight. Not bothering with socks.

Bristle worm party happening in the tub.

 

[kenchilada]

Also considering just acid washing a third of the rock to get a head start. Hate to kill it though.

 

[InactiveAcct]

Following along, I’ve been tempted for past few years to try Lanthanam. Last year Keith Berkelhamer aka Reef Bum had Bill Bramucci on as a guest. It somehow happened that the day that Bill was on the show was the worst of his reefing journey as his use of Lanthanum killed 20+ fish the night before he was scheduled as a guest. Really authentic to see somebody in the middle of tank crash mitigation and impressed that Bill continued with the show in spite of the cluster he was dealing with. He was dosing into filter floss upstream of his skimmer in the sump (not the recommended <= 10 micron sock) and his tank PO4 levels were somewhat low so perhaps it didn’t precipitate out so quickly.

Either way, I’m not sure how I could trust rock that was previously exposed to Lanthanam, because as Randy pointed out, we don’t seem to have consensus on what is actually harming the fish, feel like we are largely reliant on anecdotal experience.

 

[kenchilada]

Since moving rock into the tub, I've dripped 90mL of LaCl. Phosphate tested at 1.6ppm last night, which I cannot explain since this is nearly double the PO4 removed of what I should have gotten for this dose. Perhaps it is just blurry results due to the poor test resolution. I was expecting the rock to "rebound" more PO4 and see 7-10ppm on the test.

I wonder how quickly the rock releases bound PO4 back to the water? It seemed to happen very fast in my rough experiment. Is there some giant phosphate bomb from the rock still coming? Or am I really removing PO4 this quickly and approaching <1ppm already?

LaCl seems to be more of a "trust me its working" treatment. It obviously works wonders but it annoys me that I cannot reliably explain and predict it's effects mathematically as we can with alkalinity. It has a distinct magic potion vibe.

 

[kenchilada]

Tonight PO4 in the rock tub measured 0.2ppm. Tested twice. I’m very confused why it is plummeting so fast.