Neophos Dosing

[Johnmcc]

Good morning y'all. Little background, I've had my systems of (1) 120gallon, (1) 50 gallon plumbed into a 75-gallon fug with skimmer and small homemade algae scrubber up and running for 3.5 years. It's a mixed reef but SPS dominant and I've had undetectable phosphate the whole time. My LPS grow fine but my SPS are very slow growers, and the colors could be better. My current parameters are below, and I use only Salifert test kits.
ALk: 8
PH: 8 - 8.1
Calcium: 420
Magnesium: 1200
Nitrate: 50
Phosphate: 0

Over the last month I've been feeding heavy (mix of nori, flake, rods and oyster eggs) in an effort to increase phosphate lvls but instead my nitrates are going up, historically they've also been very low around 5ppm. I've also had a large break out in cyano, which is annoying but not the end of the world. I've finally bit the bullet and decided to dose Neophos to increase my phosphate lvls. I started dosing yesterday and used the dosing recommendations and it had no effect on my lvls. I decided to go above and beyond and added roughly 60ML over the last 24 hours and my lvls still won't budge. So, am I ok to continue to add until I have a detectable lvl or should I be more conservative and go slower?

 

[One Reefing Boi]

Good morning y'all. Little background, I've had my systems of (1) 120gallon, (1) 50 gallon plumbed into a 75-gallon fug with skimmer and small homemade algae scrubber up and running for 3.5 years. It's a mixed reef but SPS dominant and I've had undetectable phosphate the whole time. My LPS grow fine but my SPS are very slow growers, and the colors could be better. My current parameters are below, and I use only Salifert test kits.
ALk: 8
PH: 8 - 8.1
Calcium: 420
Magnesium: 1200
Nitrate: 50
Phosphate: 0

Over the last month I've been feeding heavy (mix of nori, flake, rods and oyster eggs) in an effort to increase phosphate lvls but instead my nitrates are going up, historically they've also been very low around 5ppm. I've also had a large break out in cyano, which is annoying but not the end of the world. I've finally bit the bullet and decided to dose Neophos to increase my phosphate lvls. I started dosing yesterday and used the dosing recommendations and it had no effect on my lvls. I decided to go above and beyond and added roughly 60ML over the last 24 hours and my lvls still won't budge. So, am I ok to continue to add until I have a detectable lvl or should I be more conservative and go slower?

I haven’t used NeoPhos, but I’ve used NeoNitro. I had the opposite issue, my nitrate was 0 for awhile and my phosphate was 0.7 (not 0.07).

I only dosed nitrates at 0.5 ppm/day. It took awhile at doing that for it to start building it until I could detect it. I always waited 24 hours from dosing till testing. Took about a week of daily dosing 0.5 ppm/day

So I’d stick with the recommended dose on the bottle and stick to it a bit. The thing about phosphate too, is that it gets absorbed by the rocks we have. So what you’re doing is probably saturating the rocks (hence why it’s not detectable) and once they’re fully saturated, then you will notice the values rising.

How long do you wait before testing after dosing?

 

[Johnmcc]

I haven’t used NeoPhos, but I’ve used NeoNitro. I had the opposite issue, my nitrate was 0 for awhile and my phosphate was 0.7 (not 0.07).

I only dosed nitrates at 0.5 ppm/day. It took awhile at doing that for it to start building it until I could detect it. I always waited 24 hours from dosing till testing. Took about a week of daily dosing 0.5 ppm/day

So I’d stick with the recommended dose on the bottle and stick to it a bit. The thing about phosphate too, is that it gets absorbed by the rocks we have. So what you’re doing is probably saturating the rocks (hence why it’s not detectable) and once they’re fully saturated, then you will notice the values rising.

How long do you wait before testing after dosing?

Thanks for the advice. I wait around an hour, that should give it plenty of time to circulate throughout my whole system.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

. So, am I ok to continue to add until I have a detectable lvl or should I be more conservative and go slower?

Yes. It may take a lot. If and when it runs out, I recommend food grade sodium phosphate.

 

[Johnmcc]

Yes. It may take a lot. If and when it runs out, I recommend food grade sodium phosphate.

Randy, thanks for chiming in, much appreciated. I'll order some trisodium phosphate once the Neophos runs out.

 

[Johnmcc]

Wanted to share that it took roughly 500ml before I was able to detect phosphate. Been dosing roughly 75ml a day since to keep it at barely detectable lvls. Hopefully I'll hit the right saturation point and will be able to really dial it in.

 

[ChrisfromBrick]

In a tank that big, I dont know how you can reasonably afford to dose with Neophos. Like Randy said, buy the food grade TSP and you will have a much cheaper version.

I'm having a similar problem now though my tank is just under 70g. My nitrate is reasonable though....3-8. My phosphates bottomed, but I test daily so I nipped that in the bud immediately. Stopped using my GFO reactor and am currently on a bottle of Neophos getting readings from .04-.08. I am going to buy some TSP soon and make my own.

 

[Johnmcc]

In a tank that big, I dont know how you can reasonably afford to dose with Neophos. Like Randy said, buy the food grade TSP and you will have a much cheaper version.

I'm having a similar problem now though my tank is just under 70g. My nitrate is reasonable though....3-8. My phosphates bottomed, but I test daily so I nipped that in the bud immediately. Stopped using my GFO reactor and am currently on a bottle of Neophos getting readings from .04-.08. I am going to buy some TSP soon and make my own.

You're spot on, the Neophos didn't make sense. I ended up getting food grade TSP and I'm dosing with that now. It takes a fraction to hit my lvls now, I'm happy with the outcome.

 

[ChrisfromBrick]

You're spot on, the Neophos didn't make sense. I ended up getting food grade TSP and I'm dosing with that now. It takes a fraction to hit my lvls now, I'm happy with the outcome.

awesome, glad its working. I was at 0.09 this morning and i'll certainly take that.

 

[Johnmcc]

awesome, glad its working. I was at 0.09 this morning and i'll certainly take that.

what test kit are you using? I ran out of my Salifert regents and using a Sera kit, which I'm not happy with it. It's difficult to read.

 

[kozzy]

Good morning y'all. Little background, I've had my systems of (1) 120gallon, (1) 50 gallon plumbed into a 75-gallon fug with skimmer and small homemade algae scrubber up and running for 3.5 years. It's a mixed reef but SPS dominant and I've had undetectable phosphate the whole time. My LPS grow fine but my SPS are very slow growers, and the colors could be better. My current parameters are below, and I use only Salifert test kits.
ALk: 8
PH: 8 - 8.1
Calcium: 420
Magnesium: 1200
Nitrate: 50
Phosphate: 0

Over the last month I've been feeding heavy (mix of nori, flake, rods and oyster eggs) in an effort to increase phosphate lvls but instead my nitrates are going up, historically they've also been very low around 5ppm. I've also had a large break out in cyano, which is annoying but not the end of the world. I've finally bit the bullet and decided to dose Neophos to increase my phosphate lvls. I started dosing yesterday and used the dosing recommendations and it had no effect on my lvls. I decided to go above and beyond and added roughly 60ML over the last 24 hours and my lvls still won't budge. So, am I ok to continue to add until I have a detectable lvl or should I be more conservative and go slower?

hey I know this was a month ago and glad to hear you got your issue fixed! Turns out i'm in ur shoes now lol. I was just wondering what you did in terms of dosing a frequency. So in my case where no matter what i feed or anything its just zeros. Im going to get neo phos tomorrow. Did you dose once a day, 2x, every few hours?? Im confused because the goal is obviously to keep p04 in the water but from what i see people doing - dosing once a day until they get a reading- that is not useful for someone who currently has some coral. Also along side the dosing frequency what number were you dosing to? 0.1ppm? 0.2ppm? I assume I should kind of dose a higher number then I realistically want in order to maintain levels in the water. Any info on your experience would be much appreciated!

 

[Johnmcc]

hey I know this was a month ago and glad to hear you got your issue fixed! Turns out i'm in ur shoes now lol. I was just wondering what you did in terms of dosing a frequency. So in my case where no matter what i feed or anything its just zeros. Im going to get neo phos tomorrow. Did you dose once a day, 2x, every few hours?? Im confused because the goal is obviously to keep p04 in the water but from what i see people doing - dosing once a day until they get a reading- that is not useful for someone who currently has some coral. Also along side the dosing frequency what number were you dosing to? 0.1ppm? 0.2ppm? I assume I should kind of dose a higher number then I realistically want in order to maintain levels in the water. Any info on your experience would be much appreciated!

I tried to stay fairly conservative with my dosing. I started at 15ML per dosing and would test an hour later. Turns out, it took 2 bottles of Neophos before I stated to detect even trace amounts of Phosphates in my system. I ended up getting loudwolf trisodium phosphate and I dose that at 3ML (it's much more potent). I now have detectable lvls of phosphate in my system. I keep it at .1 - .25 for now and no longer have to dose. I'll continue to monitor my corals and make changes as needed.

 

[kozzy]

I tried to stay fairly conservative with my dosing. I started at 15ML per dosing and would test an hour later. Turns out, it took 2 bottles of Neophos before I stated to detect even trace amounts of Phosphates in my system. I ended up getting loudwolf trisodium phosphate and I dose that at 3ML (it's much more potent). I now have detectable lvls of phosphate in my system. I keep it at .1 - .25 for now and no longer have to dose. I'll continue to monitor my corals and make changes as needed.

Hey thanks for the reply, very helpful. Only part I’m still confused with (I tried to do the math based on ur numbers but I didn’t know what ur tank size was based off your initial post). If in your case say you dosed for 0.1ppm phosphate and within 2 hours it was testing zero would you re dose again every 2 hours. I was gonna hook it up to a doser just so the levels aren’t constantly going from high to zero. In your case once you realized you can dose pretty heavy and still have no outcome what ppm for u dosing for and how often? Sorry if I wasn’t clear but that should make sense . Thanks again

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Hey thanks for the reply, very helpful. Only part I’m still confused with (I tried to do the math based on ur numbers but I didn’t know what ur tank size was based off your initial post). If in your case say you dosed for 0.1ppm phosphate and within 2 hours it was testing zero would you re dose again every 2 hours. I was gonna hook it up to a doser just so the levels aren’t constantly going from high to zero. In your case once you realized you can dose pretty heavy and still have no outcome what ppm for u dosing for and how often? Sorry if I wasn’t clear but that should make sense . Thanks again

My recommendation in general is to dose 0.05 ppm once a day for a while to see what happens.

 

[Johnmcc]

Hey thanks for the reply, very helpful. Only part I’m still confused with (I tried to do the math based on ur numbers but I didn’t know what ur tank size was based off your initial post). If in your case say you dosed for 0.1ppm phosphate and within 2 hours it was testing zero would you re dose again every 2 hours. I was gonna hook it up to a doser just so the levels aren’t constantly going from high to zero. In your case once you realized you can dose pretty heavy and still have no outcome what ppm for u dosing for and how often? Sorry if I wasn’t clear but that should make sense . Thanks again

I dosed after I tested till I hit the numbers I wanted. Also, early on, after a night my phosphates would bottom out again and I'd have to redose. It's a process but if your regimented and careful it's pretty straightforward.

 

[kozzy]

My recommendation in general is to dose 0.05 ppm once a day for a while to see what happens.

Thanks! I will go ahead with doing that starting tonight!

 

[kozzy]

I dosed after I tested till I hit the numbers I wanted. Also, early on, after a night my phosphates would bottom out again and I'd have to redose. It's a process but if your regimented and careful it's pretty straightforward.

Makes sense. Trial and hopefully no error kind of thing and different for everyone. Appreciate the advice. Will be starting today

 

[kozzy]

My recommendation in general is to dose 0.05 ppm once a day for a while to see what happens.

Hey sorry to bother you again, so I just dosed Neo nitrate and phosphate. I tested an hour after and two hours after. Nitrate was there but phosphate still 0. I dosed for 0.1 ppm in P04. Is it normal to just instantly be absorbed into the rocks and sand and should I just keep dosing every few hours? I assume there’s no point of waiting 24 hours every time - could be wrong in that tho.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Hey sorry to bother you again, so I just dosed Neo nitrate and phosphate. I tested an hour after and two hours after. Nitrate was there but phosphate still 0. I dosed for 0.1 ppm in P04. Is it normal to just instantly be absorbed into the rocks and sand and should I just keep dosing every few hours? I assume there’s no point of waiting 24 hours every time - could be wrong in that tho.

It can be rapidly absorbed, yes. No point in waiting.

 

[ChrisfromBrick]

what test kit are you using? I ran out of my Salifert regents and using a Sera kit, which I'm not happy with it. It's difficult to read.

late response, sorry. Hanna testers.