High Phosphates

[topher3f]

Ok so I am now on my second 75G tank, fairly new to the hobby. I have a FOWLER setup running right now. I has been running for 7 days so still going through a small cycle, my last tank had the bottom blow out so I did a transfer of all rock and sand to a new 75G. This process took some time as large aquariums are not plentiful in HI and I had to go barrow some additional sand from the pacific to make this all happen.

All fish and shrimp perished due to the fact I did not have a permanent QT setup and running. I now have a 30G cycling and will run permanently in my bedroom from this point forward as you never know.

My issue is before my old tank went down I always had a serious nitrate and phosphate issue. I figured it was due to me running a canister filter and not a sump. So I switched to a sump and now run a 4x10 sock and large ball of Cheato in the sump. Right after i switched to the sump the old tank broke so now I have this running on the new tank.

After a week my base rock is turning brown again which means algea is getting ready to form so I tested the water for all parameters and this is what I have:

NH3-.50ppm
NO2-0.0ppm
NO3-20ppm
pH-8.0
PO3/4-2.0

How can I get all these phosphates and nitrates out of my system? If I run a BRS GFO and Carbon reactor should that drop the phosphates? Should I try the sponge? Santa Monica? I am open to any ideas.

Current system is: 4 Turbo Snails, 4 Halloween Hermit Crabs, x2 Galaxyhryo LED lights, ESHOPPS overflow and Rio Plus 2500 return pump, 300W heater, x2 Bagged FLUVAL carbon, 85 pounds of live rock, and about 3 inches of live sand directly from the ocean. The refugium has a 6700K light on from 8pm until 6am. Lights run from 830am until 730pm.

Thank you for any help or ideas.

[shifty51008]

Gfo will drop the phosphates but you will have to change it daily till it gets to your low levels. Do you run a skimmer? How much do you feed?

You can also look into carbon dosing if you have a good skimmer. And also dosing lanthium to lower them.

Where did you collect the sand from? If it was right on the beach or close to the beach you will get alot of phosphates from there

[topher3f]

I am running a Reef Octopus 1000-HOB. This thing runs like a champion. I used a 20G tall not long for my sump so no room for a Skimmer down there. In the future when this one dies I will transfer to a long and put the skimmer in the bottom. Right now I only feed one cube of the Essentials by San Fransisco every other day so the crabs have something to sift and snack on. I don't see how a BRS GFO would need daily changing, especially with the size of that reactor. That seems almost counter productive to the purpose of GFO. Plus the cost would be just through the roof.

I put on my gear and a tank and went out 50 yards to gather my sand. About 40 feet deep. I know the stuff close to the shore can have containments, unwanted creatures, and all sorts of issues.

I know you can use sand from shore but that would make for an extremely long cycle in your aquarium. A booster or type of biological chemical would be needed to get it started correctly for aquarium usage.

[shifty51008]

Gfo can get saturated within a couple hours if po4 is high, once it is within range of around .03 or lower it can last a month or so.

Imo your feeding alot, i have 7 fish along with a bunch of snails and only feed 1 cube every other day in my 75 gal. But i do feed dried foods daily for my anthis and breeding clowns

[topher3f]

Im not feeding any dry foods at this time. I have been thinking about cutting my lighting off and only feeding two cubes a week until this phosphate comes under control.

I really am trying to find the culprit behind the cause though. Even the Cheato is not reducing the amount I have.

[nuxx]

Gfo.

[CStrickland]

Test the water that comes out of your gfo reactor for phosphates. When you find some, the gfo is full and needs changing. If it becomes cost prohibitive you can research lathanum chloride.

I used natural sand. No issues whatsoever.

Do you change your water sometimes? That removes phos. When I do it I use a turkey baster to fluff the gross crud out of my rocks and a gravel vacuum to suck it out of the sand. It helps a lot by targeting the source.

What is the source of your water for replacing evaporation, and doing changes?

[topher3f]

I am using a 4-Stage BRS RODI system. I do at least 25% weekly water changes since the conception of my reef tanks. Do it early Saturday mornings before the family wakes up.

[topher3f]

Ok to everyone who has read this article I have some serious updates...

First I went and bought a second phosban reactor and placed Phosgaurd in there to do a quick absorption of the phosphates. But even after this they GHA still kept coming on every rock surface.

I brought some of my water down to the local fish store and the phosphates read zero across the board. So what is making this happen?

I read some threads on here and then across the internet so I decided to take a chance. I took all rock out (80 pounds) of the tank and placed them into a clean Brute trash can full of nice and clean RO/DI water. I put a cheap 750 GPH powerhead and an air stone for a few days. Of course I took all light sources away. Didn't the phosphate rise to .50 ppm in a hurry!

So it appears the rock has absorbed some large amounts of phosphate from somewhere and are releasing it like a leach for GHA to grow. So I did some carbon dosing (vodka) the get my phosphate back to zero, which they are at now. Put some fake coral and PVC in my tank for the fish to use as hiding places, and I am conducting weekly GFO changes for the next month to ensure my phosphates stay at zero.

The future plans are to change the cooking rock water every week for 6 to 8 weeks and see what happens. If the phosphate still does not drop then I will probably buy some new rock from BRS and call it a day. I'll put this rock in the ocean and move on.

I will post again in a few weeks with an update.

[CStrickland]

If you don't have any rock in the tank your biological filtration of ammonia might be compromised

[topher3f]

So I have two rocks still in there due to my feather dusters. Either way those will never substitute 80 pounds of rock.

What I do have is a Phosban reactor loaded with Fluval Ammonia Absorber ready to rock incase of an ammonia spike. I also placed a Seachem Ammonia Alert in my tank and sump area just in case.

I have had no issues thus far,been roughly 3 weeks since removal...of course I have an established Cheato Refugium running and an established 4 inch sand bed running. All of my cleanup crew is still functioning ok and I measured my Phosphates tonight and still zero. So my GFO seems to be functioning well. I am carbon dosing 2.5ml of vodka daily. Due to all levels returning back to zero I am going to slowly bring that off line and let the GFO continue to run.

I did however just upgrade my Protein Skimmer to a Reef Octopus Classic 150 as I think the HOB-1000 was not adequate enough for a FOWLER tank. I believe those HOB Skimmers should only run fish only setups. My opinion!

[topher3f]

All rock is now back into the tank. The tank is having some diatoms issues obviously as the rock is still kicking off some dead material.

Water changes are large and frequent to keep the diatoms under control and all seems to be settling well. Fish are healthy and the tank perimeters are holding steady.

Calcium seems to struggle around 360-380 so I am using "Purple Up" every few days to help raise to the 400 level. Ph seems to hold steady when I introduce the purple up so I am going to continue that for now. Possible two part in the future.

[Johnic]

Purple up isn't necessary, just dose a 2 part - alk and calc combo.