Reef Central Online Community - View Single Post - the secret to colorful,healthy corals....obvious to some,elusive to many

scolley · 01/17/2013, 09:22 AM

From the data presented this looks like a "low or no phosphates" conclusion regarding low dKH and colorful corals. However, without knowing the mechanism the various reef keepers reporting zero phosphates used to test, we don't know the water really had zero phosphates.

Some test kits give no reading beyond a certain low number, leading the tester to conclude zero. Salifert is an example of this. Such kits could lead one to believe you have zero phosphates when - in fact - you are running at 0.02, 0.01 or even 0.005. Those are all low, but decidedly non-zero.

Bottom line, without knowing the testing mechanism for phosphates on the tanks reporting zero, the only conclusion that we can draw is that they had very low phosphate tanks. Taking the zero-phosphate reports at face value requires more information (testing mechanism) to be wholly trusted IMO.

01/17/2013, 09:22 AM	#17
scolley ARKSC Founding Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: CT Posts: 2,823	From the data presented this looks like a "low or no phosphates" conclusion regarding low dKH and colorful corals. However, without knowing the mechanism the various reef keepers reporting zero phosphates used to test, we don't know the water really had zero phosphates. Some test kits give no reading beyond a certain low number, leading the tester to conclude zero. Salifert is an example of this. Such kits could lead one to believe you have zero phosphates when - in fact - you are running at 0.02, 0.01 or even 0.005. Those are all low, but decidedly non-zero. Bottom line, without knowing the testing mechanism for phosphates on the tanks reporting zero, the only conclusion that we can draw is that they had very low phosphate tanks. Taking the zero-phosphate reports at face value requires more information (testing mechanism) to be wholly trusted IMO. __________________ - Steve Longing for "fact based" reef keeping - with hearsay, non sequiturs, dogma and other types of bad “information” removed from our discussions.