PO4 plummeted with Nopox

[Dweezilz]

I have been battling SCA Dinos for 18 months on and off. I do not have corals, just fish/inverts. The tank is about 2 years old. The last 6 months I've gone all in to end them and have not done a water change or cleaned the sides/back glass, while dosing silcates, Phyto, MB7, Pods. As of end of August the battle was finally over...2 weeks of no Dinos on slides at that point and none still today (for now). That left me with a very dirty tank. NO3 was 85 and PO4 was .5 (not a typo it was 0.5). I tried to manage those with less feeding and an algae scrubber to no avail. I added GFO in a bag at one point and brought PO4 down to .25 but it rose back up after a few months and I didn't add more GFO. On Sept 15th I started to dose about 6ml of NOPOX in my Reefer250 (65 gallon) per instructions. NO3 went down to 74 after 2 weeks and then down to 67 last night. I set my skimmer to skim wet as well. I also added a Red Sea Nanomat 10 days ago and it's collecting lots of brown stuff. I had not checked the PO4 for 3 weeks since it was .5 and everything I read said NOPOX would lower that more slowly than NO4. I also dose MB7 once a week.

Well, just checked my PO4 last night and it was 0.03!! I double checked it with Hanna and Red Sea Pro...0.03 from .5 four weeks ago! I dosed NeoPhos to bring it up to 0.05 and today it was 0. I just dosed more NEOPHOS to raise to 0.04 so we will see what it is later tonight. What in the heck happened? Was it the NoPOX or Reefmat or both? I did not think my PO4 could go down just a little and the NO3 plummet to 0 in 4 weeks. My bad for not testing it for 3 weeks but I figured at .5 it couldn't go low so low. At any rate, what is the best thing to do at this point? The fish all seem ok as well as the snails, crabs, urchins, shrimp. I do not want Dinos back that's for sure!

 

[Dburr1014]

I have been battling SCA Dinos for 18 months on and off. I do not have corals, just fish/inverts. The tank is about 2 years old. The last 6 months I've gone all in to end them and have not done a water change or cleaned the sides/back glass, while dosing silcates, Phyto, MB7, Pods. As of end of August the battle was finally over...2 weeks of no Dinos on slides at that point and none still today (for now). That left me with a very dirty tank. NO3 was 85 and PO4 was .5 (not a typo it was 0.5). I tried to manage those with less feeding and an algae scrubber to no avail. I added GFO in a bag at one point and brought PO4 down to .25 but it rose back up after a few months and I didn't add more GFO. On Sept 15th I started to dose about 6ml of NOPOX in my Reefer250 (65 gallon) per instructions. NO3 went down to 74 after 2 weeks and then down to 67 last night. I set my skimmer to skim wet as well. I also added a Red Sea Nanomat 10 days ago and it's collecting lots of brown stuff. I had not checked the PO4 for 3 weeks since it was .5 and everything I read said NOPOX would lower that more slowly than NO4. I also dose MB7 once a week.

Well, just checked my PO4 last night and it was 0.03!! I double checked it with Hanna and Red Sea Pro...0.03 from .5 four weeks ago! I dosed NeoPhos to bring it up to 0.05 and today it was 0. I just dosed more NEOPHOS to raise to 0.04 so we will see what it is later tonight. What in the heck happened? Was it the NoPOX or Reefmat or both? I did not think my PO4 could go down just a little and the NO3 plummet to 0 in 4 weeks. My bad for not testing it for 3 weeks but I figured at .5 it couldn't go low so low. At any rate, what is the best thing to do at this point? The fish all seem ok as well as the snails, crabs, urchins, shrimp. I do not want Dinos back that's for sure!

Could be test error.
Phosphate is locked up in the rock so more will come out.

 

[Dweezilz]

Could be test error.
Phosphate is locked up in the rock so more will come out.

Last night I tested with my Hanna Phos ULR and it showed 0.03. I re-checked it with the Red Sea which was the same. Today both show 0. Could NOPOX take that tests from 0.5 to 0 in a month and there still be plenty of PO4 in the rocks? I'm just not sure what to do in general at this point. I'm going to do a 20% water change tonight which will help the NO3 a bit (it's at 67) but I'm very worried about the PO4. PH, DHK are 8 & 7.9 so they are good.

 

[Uncle99]

NoPox does little to phosphate.
It would not result in .5ppm to zero change.

Something else has changed.

 

[Dweezilz]

NoPox does little to phosphate.
It would not result in .5ppm to zero change.

Something else has changed.

I haven't changed anything besides adding the Red Sea NanoMat and started the NoPox. I did add 10 small hermits, Halloween Urchin, and a couple cleaner shrimp 2 weeks ago. Nothing else though and no dosing is happening besides the NoPox and MB7.

 

[Dburr1014]

I've hadn't changed anything besides adding the Red Sea NanoMat and started the NoPox. I did add 10 small hermits, Halloween Urchin, and a couple cleaner shrimp 2 weeks ago. Nothing else though and no dosing is happening besides the NoPox and MB7.

Stop the nopox, test with the Hanna again in 24 hours.
Report here.

 

[GARRIGA]

My experience with NoPox being nitrates will be reduced faster than PO4 but both needed for each to drop and if nitrates drop quickly it will take PO4 with it. I've bottomed both by overdosing NoPox. Fact is that post cycle had to add PO4 to get nitrates down with NoPox. No WC performed and both dropped to manageable rather quickly although no other life added since I consider it still in cycle until all four components (ammonia, nitrites, nitrates and phosphates) dropped to reasonable.

 

[Dweezilz]

My experience with NoPox being nitrates will be reduced faster than PO4 but both needed for each to drop and if nitrates drop quickly it will take PO4 with it. I've bottomed both by overdosing NoPox. Fact is that post cycle had to add PO4 to get nitrates down with NoPox. No WC performed and both dropped to manageable rather quickly although no other life added since I consider it still in cycle until all four components (ammonia, nitrites, nitrates and phosphates) dropped to reasonable.

I wonder if having crazy high nitrates like I did would facilitate the NOPOX to reduce the PO4 really quickly? Although I'm guessing if that happened maybe Nitrates would have fallen way more than they did in a month. 85 to 67.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I wonder if having crazy high nitrates like I did would facilitate the NOPOX to reduce the PO4 really quickly? Although I'm guessing if that happened maybe Nitrates would have fallen way more than they did in a month. 85 to 67.

It doesn't typically drop phosphate much, if at all. Perhaps a test error was the earlier measurement.

In any case, stopping it is fine, but it is far out of the norm to see that effect.

 

[GARRIGA]

I wonder if having crazy high nitrates like I did would facilitate the NOPOX to reduce the PO4 really quickly? Although I'm guessing if that happened maybe Nitrates would have fallen way more than they did in a month. 85 to 67.

Below were my results. High nitrate readings might be caused by nitrites present during initial cycle but you can see that at one point I added PO4 to get the final drop in nitrates around late October where it rose to 2.0. Because I used Reborn as a substrate it likely released initial PO4 but once exhausted or came to equilibrium I assumed that was the limiting component and I added NeoPhos. Ultimately everything balanced out and although reading of PO4 shows 0.25 that is because that's lowest API shows above zero. Based on color one can conclude it's less than 0.25 but above zero since I have forcefully bottomed it out for testing.

System water approximately 16 gallons and you can see PO4 dropped from 2.0 to 0.25 ppm. I've only had to dose PO4 once as later on life was added and feeding ensured PO4 was supplied. I kept using NoPox until February 2023 where the system seemed to have stabilized and no longer had issues with GHA and stopped testing as well. More of a look and worry guy than constant tester. If life is thriving and issues aren't presenting themselves then I'm not chasing numbers. Plus this was experimental fish only to stress test how much food I could add before system became unstable as to filtration being used. You can add a lot and proper filtration will solve it. No live rock used or skimmer, either.

Can't say with 100% certainty that my test results are accurate but did use the same test kits, been using API since the 80s and figured out how to properly perform these tests as user error does affect it and reagent were within expiration date. I'm a firm believer that carbon dosing will drop PO4 so long as nitrates are present and vise versa. Proven to myself that overdosing NoPox will drop both quickly and I'll never do another WC post cycle again. Although best overdose before life added and stopped immediately if cloudiness forms, fish show signs of gasping for air or white slime shows post life added. I tested that as well.

You'll see nitrates rise towards end because part of my cycling is to stress test the filtration by increasing the dosage of ammonium chloride. Prefer to have a system ready day one post cycle to have all fish added to avoid territorial disputes later on and especially in a small tank. I also wanted to replicate dropping nitrates quickly with NoPox. It is after-all a test tank.

 

[rishma]

I accidentally overdosed nopox recently, I didn’t mean to dose any (long story). My nitrates were fairly high before the dose but PO4 was 0.12. The phosphate dropped to zero. Nitrates came down very low, but not all the way to zero. I did not get a bloom. I tried dosing phosphate for several days, but it stayed at zero. I got impatient and worried about dinos so I dumped in a large portion of reef Roids. That did the trick a little too well. It took me a little while to get things back into balance.

I know the consensus is that carbon dosing dosing is not highly effective with phosphate, but I find that if there’s enough nitrate or if nitrate is added, it will bring phosphates down or even to zero with a phosphorus URL checker.

I figured that because I typically keep phosphates under control in my tank, once I stripped it to zero my phosphate dosing was just binding to the rock. Probably could’ve kept dosing to correct it, but like I said, I got impatient

 

[Dweezilz]

Stop the nopox, test with the Hanna again in 24 hours.
Report here.

Just retested on Hanna and RS Pro and I'm at 0.018! I just dosed 2 caps of NeoPhos. I'm looking at my tests in September and back (I was using Red Sea Pro only due to Silicates blocking Hanna) and I can't see how the tests could all be in error. I'm doing exactly the same thing unless silicates made the Red Sea way off even though it's not known to be suspectable to silicates. I stopped silicates in August. Even Salifert showed the same. I'm baffled at this huge drop. I can't imagine the nanomat doing anything dramatic either. The only other thing I did was reduce frozen mysis and used more flake food over the last 3 months.