Lanthanum chloride

[Bladez]

Use these bags here - they are inexpensive and have a plastic ring that can be used to mount them in a bag holder.
http://www.aquaticeco.com/subcategories/1495/Bag-Filters

Gary, where do you get your bags from? I just got some from utahbiodiesel and the ring for the opening appears to be metal.

 

[tmz]

keep ALL metals out of your reef tank water, it not an option but a must.

Great post by sport, Tom... however there's the ideal world and there's the REAL world. We know keeping ALL metals out of your aquarium is an impossibility. Powerheads, pumps, hangars etc. all have metal parts. Foods, artificial salt mixes etc. all contain metals.
Heck, we use granular ferric oxide to lower PO4 levels. RUST! (Ok.. not EXACTLY rust but it gets the point across!)
There's probably more metals in any given reef aquarium from sources such as fish foods and artifcial salt mixes than what's oxidizes from a prop shaft or a sock ring.

edit: Dosing LaCl3 into a reef aquarium is much more of a crucial concern than the SS ring on a filter sock

Hi Gary, Yes most aquariums have excess metals from the sources you noted and Sport's phrasing was not entirely elegant ;not all metals are toxic at low levels( eg calcium, magnesium, strontium, lanthanum ,iron etc.) but the point was made in the context of stainless steel.
Dr Shimek did an assay years ago which showed that aquariums contain excess metals from foods.salt mixes and so on. Fortunately, most are bound to refractory organics rendering them non toxic in that state . Some salts include organics (Reef Crystals and Coral Life ) in part for dealing with impurities that may occur.
Free metals that stream from corroding material are not bound and many are toxic. Iron doesn't count as in gfo since it's harmless and depleted rapidly, but zinc, nickel and copper and some others can be deadly. BTW, gfo can grab some free metals and help take them out of the water.

Bottom line, most stainless steel looses it's anti corroisive qaulity in salt water or mist as oxygen is not readily available to support the passivation process and it does contain some varying amounts of harmful unbound metals.

I admit I don't think I paid enough attention to stainless steel clamps rusting over the water until that discussion. My minority position in thread was less damning than the majority in terms of blaming a rusting stainless steel clamp for the op's tank crash. I still don't think that caused the problem in that case.
BTW, I use mag 12s and they have stainless steel screws exposed to the water that don't corrode; wonder if they are the marine grade he noted.

 

[Bladez]

It is the repeated exposure to air then salt then air etc... that causes the stainless to breakdown. I assume your pump is constantly submerged thus not exposed to the air so they shouldn't rust.

BTW, I use mag 12s and they have stainless steel screws exposed to the water that don't corrode; wonder if they are the marine grade he noted.

 

[pascal32]

Today's dose: .03 drop in phosphate on a 400 gallon system with 500ml of 3ml/liter solution. Effective dose of 1.5 ml lanthanum 9000ppb solution.

Interesting to noted this is three times the impact SPotter had with the same 9000 lob solution

 

[r.d.m]

ive had a fair bit of success with lanthanum chloride,i have been battling phosphate for a while,tried red sea nopox,rowaphos and biopellets i believe any of these will work if you can get the phosphate down to a manageable level
i started at a phosphate level of 2.5ppm(hanna) in a 30g system(red sea max) with an initial dose of 0.2 ml daily,after a week it was down to 0.5,i started adding it to the ATO reservoir with kalk but it didnt work(so theres the answer to the earlier thread) so cleaned out the reservoir and as the ATO reservoir lasts for 10 days i put a 10x dose (2ml) mixed in with the RO top off water,the phosphate continued to fall and at the 2 week point im at 0.04ppm just need to either work out a maintenance dose or stop dosing and put the rowaphos back in
i dose just in front of a Tunze 9002 skimmer and have noticed no ill effects on any of the corals,inverts or fish
eventually tracked down the phosphate to a batch of natural sea water,switching to synthetic now

 

[Plato]

I'm using the 3,000 ppb solution. I've had the quart forever. The math (I think) breaks down to 1ml to 100 gallons for 1ppm of PO4. I use a dosing pump http://coralvue.com/aquahouse-aquarium-dosing-pumps/ to inject into the skimmer intake. It is diluted 20ml sea klear into 16 oz ro/di. I'm currently dosing 12ml daily, 1 ml every other hour. Using Hana low range meter it usually around .05ppm.

Here is the pump setup. It's the little pump on top of the Bubble Mangus doser. The Sea Klear is in the container with the green lid.

Here is the tank.

 

[Elliott]

Plato:

the solution in the green top container is made up of 20ml sea klear into 16 oz ro/di? if so, that's a high concentration of LC

you are dosing into your skimmer without any other extraction method of LC/P04 precipitates?

 

[Plato]

Elliott:

Yes, I add 20 ml sea klear then top it off to 16 oz with ro/di. My wife (a mathematican) helped me do the conversion. Now weather I remembered it correctly is another story. I wanted to know how much sea clear to add to water to duplicated the effectiveness of brightwells phosphate-e http://brightwellaquatics.com/products/phosphat-e.php in which an 8 oz bottle will treat 1,000 gallons of 1ppm po4. It came out to that one ml of sea clear will treat 1ppm per 100 gallons. So 10 ml sea clear into an 8oz bottle and then top off with water. It works great for me so far.

I dose one ml of the mix solution Evey other hour instead of all at once. One so the skimmer doesn't go crazy and so it will be more efficient of skimming. I'm running a MR3 skimmer so I don't have the ability to run a filter sock on the water coming out of the skimmer as the gate valve is so low. I have noticed that the sump sponge filter has to be cleaned every week or it clogs. I have a bigger 275 with an Orca 250 pro that I do run a filter sock on as well as the same injection method but I still space it out with hourly dosing.

The skimmer with out a mechanical filter will do a great job of removing all of the precipitate with out mechanical filtration but I'm sure the mechanical aspect will improve the removal much better.

I have a 525 fish only system that is injected as well but directly into the sump before the main pump to disperse it into the whole system. It is skimmed by an Octopus SRO-5k ext which goes nuts if it goes into first. The fish only system has a pool sand filter that traps the phosphate precipitate as sea klear was intentionally designed for. Mechanical removal.

Here is the tank. With out the lanthanum chloride injection the PO4 was always around 2 to 3ppm. That promoted lots of algae growth. With injection I can easily keep it under 0.15ppm. The tank if fed lots of dry pellets so thats were all the phosphate comes from.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2RCA1r08GU

Here is the filtration.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzv31JmXe34&feature=relmfu

 

[Elliott]

thanks Plato, the first video link is marked "private" and cannot be accessed

I'll have to go back and check my concentration, I basically used the same concentration that Joe was using on his 20,000g reef in NY

 

[Plato]

Unlocked

 

[Elliott]

Plato: do you actually see the LC precipitate (yellowish) in the skimmate? I was not aware that it could be removed by a skimmer

 

[Elliott]

so my LC concentration I use is 40 cc to a gallon of RO/DI, or 40cc LC : 3700cc RO/DI
your LC conentration is 20 cc to 16 oz RO/DI, or 20cc LC : 480cc RO/DI

so your concentration is 3.7 times higher
however you are dosing very slowly, just 1 cc every 2 hours
while I'm dosing continuously, dripping into a filter sock

I'm going to try your slow method, I think it's safer

 

[Plato]

If I dose a larger amount the skimmer becomes cloudy but goes crazy and overflows. It becomes more stable with smaller frequent doses.

It was the MACNA in Orlando or in Atlantic City that they talked about how much phosphate the skimmate contains and I was shocked. This was with out lanthanum chloride so yes, I'm sure a skimmer has no problem exporting PO4.

 

[Elliott]

If I dose a larger amount the skimmer becomes cloudy but goes crazy and overflows. It becomes more stable with smaller frequent doses.

It was the MACNA in Orlando or in Atlantic City that they talked about how much phosphate the skimmate contains and I was shocked. This was with out lanthanum chloride so yes, I'm sure a skimmer has no problem exporting PO4.

your method of dosing slowly into a skimmer on a continuous basis would be much easier for me, no messing with filter socks, etc.

anyone else use this method?

 

[SPotter]

your method of dosing slowly into a skimmer on a continuous basis would be much easier for me, no messing with filter socks, etc.

anyone else use this method?

I use a dosing pump but my dose is much less concentrated. I add 6ml of LaCl3 to 1 gallon of rodi and then I add 300ml of that solution a day. I drip into a filter sock at the end of my drain. I've been able to keep my po4 around .03 for two weeks now. I think my yellow tang is being irritated by the solution. it acts very crazy after a dose goes in.

Sent from my SCH-I510 using Tapatalk 2

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

your method of dosing slowly into a skimmer on a continuous basis would be much easier for me, no messing with filter socks, etc.

anyone else use this method?

to me, a mechanical filter ("filter sock") + skimmer has got to be a safer way of dosing LaCl3 than just using the skimmer in a continuous slow dosing schedule.

FWIW (and to reiterate what I posted earlier in this thread) I couple my LaCl3 treatment with a water change and test alkalinity immediately afterward because it's going to need a boost.

Quite honestly, I fear those that choose to administer a continuous slow dosing of LaCl3 are going to run into problems.

 

[Elliott]

to me, a mechanical filter ("filter sock") + skimmer has got to be a safer way of dosing LaCl3 than just using the skimmer in a continuous slow dosing schedule.

FWIW (and to reiterate what I posted earlier in this thread) I couple my LaCl3 treatment with a water change and test alkalinity immediately afterward because it's going to need a boost.

Quite honestly, I fear those that choose to administer a continuous slow dosing of LaCl3 are going to run into problems.

yes, that is my fear as well, I agree

however there must be a way to continuously dose very small increments of LC over time and extract the precipitate in real time, which would result in much more stable P04 and Alk levels, instead of the fluctuating levels from periodic dosing.

someone smarter than me needs to solve this thing! LC is just too cheap and effective not to use it

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

just my opinion

just my opinion

but as long as PO4 is kept below the acceptable threshold who cares if it fluctuates?

I only have to administer a dose every other month or so nowadays... and I have a HEAVY feeding schedule.

 

[Elliott]

but as long as PO4 is kept below the acceptable threshold who cares if it fluctuates?

I only have to administer a dose every other month or so nowadays... and I have a HEAVY feeding schedule.

true, but every system is different, I have to dose every week

nice shot!

 

[Plato]

My tanks are using dosing pumps to keep up ca and alk so not as worried about alk dropping. All tanks have mechanical filtration but not all have a sock after the skimmer.