Phosphates are very high

[JustinMN18]

Hello,

I have a 100 gallon DT with a 34-gallon sump. Probably 100 gallons total. I run a skimmer, and carbon in a reactor. I have previously run GFO mixed with the carbon but eventually moved to auto-dosing NoPOx. For a while everything was good. 0.1 phosphate, 1 nitrate. Over the last few weeks, I have been having serious issues with Phosphate.

Nitrates now are 7, and phosphates have been 0.5 to 0.61 over the last three weeks. I've been dosing more NoPOx, and as of this morning was dosing 25ml per day.

I feed twice a day. Frozen in the morning, and some frozen at night with a couple of pellets for my Foxface who likes that the best. I haven't dosed any coral foods in probably a week.

It seems like NoPOx isn't doing anything for me. So this morning after testing 0.61 (Hanna ulr), I lowered my dosing to 18ml per day (from 25), and swapped my carbon, and mixed in GFO. 0.75 cups of GFO, and 0.75 cups of carbon, mixed up, and slowly running in my sump. Last week I cleaned out all of the detritus in my sump, and I change filter socks every 3 days. I perform a 10% water change weekly with pre-mixed Tropic Marin salt. Last week, I got a reading of 0.01 phosphates in that bin, and 0.01 phosphates in my RODI bin. TDS reads 0 coming out of the DI resin.

Does anyone have any experience with an issue like this? I haven't noticed coral health issues or fish deaths. Really stuck on what to do next. Someone who used to work at my LFS told me that I could use Phosphat-E to get the phosphates down, and then run GFO. But I'm not sure what kind of impact (if any) this NoPOx is having on my Nitrates.

Thanks in advance everyone.

 

[Gtinnel]

My tank had been running with the phosphates at around .05 for a few years and then within the last month or so the jumped up to around .25. I was able to get them back in control with a small amount of GFO. I'm hoping to maintain them at a reasonable level with running a refugium (which I just setup) and tuning my skimmer to where it works better. I never had issues with high nutrients until my phosphate jumped up so I never bothered properly tuning my skimmer.

 

[JustinMN18]

My tank had been running with the phosphates at around .05 for a few years and then within the last month or so the jumped up to around .25. I was able to get them back in control with a small amount of GFO. I'm hoping to maintain them at a reasonable level with running a refugium (which I just setup) and tuning my skimmer to where it works better. I never had issues with high nutrients until my phosphate jumped up so I never bothered properly tuning my skimmer.

My skimmer has been running pretty dry. I've been actively trying to tune it to produce a more wet skimmate. Just not sure why/how I'm doing so much NoPOx, without really seeing any result.

 

[Lavey29]

You're not feeding very heavy so what do you attribute your phosphate rise to? What type of coral food do you use reef roids? Do you stir your sand up during water change?

 

[mdb_talon]

It sounds like you are not seeing tank issues and coral is healthy so from that perspective u would not get too concerned.

On the other hand i understand wanting to get those phosphates down. I agree with the LFS that some sort of lanthium chloride(if used properly) is a pretty cheap/quick/effective way to get the phosphates down. It only impacts phosphates but with nitrates at 7 i would personally bot be worrying about those anyway