Methods to get rid of phosphate?

[Julian.Rad17]

I have the Red Sea reefer 28 gallon and have been struggling with phosphates for a few months now. They started at 0.5 and right now are around 0.2 and haven't been going down even after my weekly 25% water changes. I've been using Phosgaurd, purigen and microbacter7 for several weeks now and they wont go down anymore. The weird thing is that I have almost no algae anywhere in the tank expect for tons of coralline. All of the corals( including SPS) are doing well except for my digitata and green slimmer. I've talked to my LFS and they're not sure what the reason is. Does anyone have anyexperience on how to get rid of them? Algae scrubbers, gfo, carbon dosing etc.

[Toby_Kourtney]

Usually when you have phosphates in the rock trying to reach equilibrium with the water. When you change the water more just leaches out the rocks. You just have to keep running media til everything is leached out. Did you cure the rock before you put it in the tank?

[Julian.Rad17]

Usually when you have phosphates in the rock trying to reach equilibrium with the water. When you change the water more just leaches out the rocks. You just have to keep running media til everything is leached out. Did you cure the rock before you put it in the tank?

Well the tank cycled with the rock in it for several weeks so I gues it cured in the tank. Not all of the rock was live however. Btw the tank is 13 months old.

[Lsufan]

How are u using the phosgaurd? Do u have it in a reactor or do u have it in a bag in the sump. I never used phosgaurd but gfo in a reactor should lower your phosphates. With it as high as yours u may have to change out the media more often until u can get them down, then get on a normal schedule of replacing the media. If your rocks are leaching it may take a while, but keeping fresh gfo in a reactor they will eventually quit leaching po4.

If your corals are doing good then I would be careful & not do anything drastic to lower po4 to fast. It may make things worse, so I would lower them slowly.

[JUNBUG361]

What type of test kit(s) are you using? Are slightly over feeding? How much bioload do you have? Or you could use biopellets

[JUNBUG361]

You could also use rowaphos

[Julian.Rad17]

What type of test kit(s) are you using? Are slightly over feeding? How much bioload do you have? Or you could use biopellets

Red Sea and Hanna checker for phosphate. Salifert and red Sea for nitrate.
I feed once a day with thawed mysis shrimp that I have rinsed and keep in the fridge. I use a turkey baster and feed very slowly for ~30 seconds. Sometimes I cut a small piece of regular shrimp and feed it to my goby with tongs. Recently I've been feeding Reefroids weekly to help my Goni but this is only while the return pump is off and I do a water change immediately after feeding the reef Roids.
I have 5 fish. 2 clowns, 1 cardinalfish,1 Firefish,1 diamond goby.
My sump is obviously very small so I don't think I have room or $ for a reactor.

[Lsufan]

I would recommend to keep doing what u are until u can afford to buy a reactor. U may need to change out the phosgaurd more often. The higher the po4 the faster the media gets used up. If u leave it in to long certain kinds of po4 remover can actually leach po4 back into the tank. Gfo will work a lot better in a reactor. I use the BRS reactors mainly because they work & they are pretty cheap. U don't have to install them in your sump, in fact I don't like taking up space in my sump with a reactor so I find somewhere out of my way & hang them somewhere in the stand.

[JamesFWB]

setup a refugium if you can with some Cheato.