zero nitrates high phosphates

[ARGYGANG]

I need help fixing my high phosphates and zero nitrates. I’ll give a in depth description with test dates now, 4/23/24 phos was .13 and nitrates were 15… 5/18/24 nitrates were 9 and phosphates were .09 (this is when the hair algae started going crazy and I have manually removed it daily off of frag plugs, the frag rack, the glass etc daily since) now on 6/23/24 nitrates are zero and phosphates are .05… I added the recommended amount of phosbond and a small amount of cuprisorb in a media bag in one of my hob filters yesterday and perform a weekly water change on it of 25% (5 gallons) the tank is a 20 gallon long and holds a lot of coral with two juvenile clownfish, a juvenile royal gramma and a juvenile bangaii cardinal fish. I feed once a day a small amount of rinsed mysis out of a pipet and I have a auto feeder that gives a extremely small amount of new life pellets once a day, roughly 5-10 pellets a day out of the auto feeder. I run two hang on back filters with one acting as a filter and one acting as a make shift reactor for carbon and now phosbond aswell. Tank has plenty of water movement with no dead water spots.

 

[ARGYGANG]

I need help fixing my high phosphates and zero nitrates. I’ll give a in depth description with test dates now, 4/23/24 phos was .13 and nitrates were 15… 5/18/24 nitrates were 9 and phosphates were .09 (this is when the hair algae started going crazy and I have manually removed it daily off of frag plugs, the frag rack, the glass etc daily since) now on 6/23/24 nitrates are zero and phosphates are .05… I added the recommended amount of phosbond and a small amount of cuprisorb in a media bag in one of my hob filters yesterday and perform a weekly water change on it of 25% (5 gallons) the tank is a 20 gallon long and holds a lot of coral with two juvenile clownfish, a juvenile royal gramma and a juvenile bangaii cardinal fish. I feed once a day a small amount of rinsed mysis out of a pipet and I have a auto feeder that gives a extremely small amount of new life pellets once a day, roughly 5-10 pellets a day out of the auto feeder. I run two hang on back filters with one acting as a filter and one acting as a make shift reactor for carbon and now phosbond aswell. Tank has plenty of water movement with no dead water spots.

what I’m thinking about doing to fix it is running the phosphate remover and feeding mysis more often and taking away the auto feeder. does this sound appropriate? I’m not sure what the source of the phosphate was as I’ve been pretty religious about water changes on this tank. I think it could have been the pellet food though.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I’m confused. You say phosphate is 0.05 ppm? That’s fine and I would not be using a phosphate binder.

My recommendation is to dose food grade ammonium chloride or bicarbonate.

 

[FernBluffReef]

My phosphates are .18 down from .21 Working to get them back to about .1.

Glad they are not <.05 anymore and my constantly having to dose neophos to push them back up. Seven months young tank. Rocks finally reached equilibrium and nutrients started to climb up from the basement about month 6.

As Randy said at .05 I would not try and lower further. Keep in mind a Hanna ULR is +/- .02 so your potentially as close to zero as you want to get without causing a different problem. If your nitrates are zero I’d let them climb up a bit. My goal is around 10 ppm nitrates and around.1 phosphates.

 

[ARGYGANG]

I’m confused. You say phosphate is 0.05 ppm? That’s fine and I would not be using a phosphate binder.

My recommendation is to dose food grade ammonium chloride or bicarbonate.

My phosphates are .18 down from .21 Working to get them back to about .1.

Glad they are not <.05 anymore and my constantly having to dose neophos to push them back up. Seven months young tank. Rocks finally reached equilibrium and nutrients started to climb up from the basement about month 6.

As Randy said at .05 I would not try and lower further. Keep in mind a Hanna ULR is +/- .02 so your potentially as close to zero as you want to get without causing a different problem. If your nitrates are zero I’d let them climb up a bit. My goal is around 10 ppm nitrates and around.1 phosphates.

oh okay, lol. Idk how I made that mistake. Wow I’ve had that misunderstood for like two years now and chasing .03 phosphates through water changes while also expecting to maintain 10 nitrate. Dang okay so I guess I’ll remove the media and go like 3 gallons on weekly wc instead of 5 gallons. Thanks.