New article of mine on phosphate

[tmz]

Well, I'll admit it for years I've thawed / rinsed frozen food with tap water then drained it through a brine shrimp net and added ro/di for fedding with a turkey baster. Thought I was getting more phosphate out than noted as some suggested the packing water needed to be decanted. I use the chlorinated tap water to limit vibrio bacteria per advice from a Coral Magazine article years ago based on a study noting vibrio populations in most commercial name brand frozen foods. .

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Thanks everyone!

I think this sentence has a typo?

Also:


Nice article!

Thanks!

Yes, I meant low phosphorus to protein ratio.

 

[Rwpdunne]

Great read thanks

 

[mdw]

Thanks from a nonchemist for another free, fact-based, and accessible article. Had to laugh at "build it and they will find phosphate." Maybe Hanna should make an anxiety checker, or a blood pressure checker...

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Your welcome!

Happy Reefing.

 

[sirreal63]

As always another great article to help reefers keep it real. Thanks for all you do for the community.

 

[RickMartin]

Let's see if I am understanding this correctly.

100 ml of Rowaphos removes .5ppm from 100g

And

22 Prime Reef Formula 1 cubes add .5ppm to it
or
15 Prime Reef Form 1 and 15 mysis cubes
or
10 Prime Reef 1 and 10 Formula 1

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Let's see if I am understanding this correctly.

100 ml of Rowaphos removes .5ppm from 100g

And

22 Prime Reef Formula 1 cubes add .5ppm to it
or
15 Prime Reef Form 1 and 15 mysis cubes
or
10 Prime Reef 1 and 10 Formula 1

The numbers that anyone gives for GFO like that are almost meaningless. The amount bound declines as the phosphate concentration declines. So X mL might take tank water from 5 ppm to 4 ppm, but might only drop the same amount of water from 0.05 to 0.03 ppm. Those are made up numbers, but they illustrate the point.

 

[Tahoe Reefer]

Interesting article, Thanks!

 

[bertoni]

Maybe Hanna should make an anxiety checker, or a blood pressure checker...

Yes, but will the the accuracy of the anxiety checker be better than +/- 4 ppb?

 

[Habib]

Thanks Randy!

I'll certainly will read it the coming days!

Read it just now. Nice article Randy!

In the past I measured phosphate on the thawed liquid of (Mysis or Artemia can't recall) and found a few decades higher phosphate than assumed in the article. It could also be a location or moment thing.

There are also very likely polyphosphates present which will not be detected but will give rise to phosphate.
Polyphosphates are often added to seafood for various preservative purposes.

http://fshn.ifas.ufl.edu/seafood/sst/AnnPdf/18th_013.pdf

So, IMHO, rinsing of frozen food can still have a significant impact on reducing unnecessary phosphate into the aquarium.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Thanks, Habib.

How much higher did you detect phosphate in mysis rinse water?.

I don't doubt the presence of polyphosphate in some grocery store foods, although I'm not sure it will rinse off well.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

FWIW, here's a test Matt Wandell did on rinsing mysis:

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showpost.php?p=11332737&postcount=19

from it:



Using a spectrophotometer at work we're able to get a precise measure of the phosphate content in water. I drew off samples of seawater from liter flasks that had 10g of mysids swirled in them for 30 seconds. The mysids were thawed out in seawater for 5 minutes, then either rinsed or not rinsed. The rinsed mysids were strained through window screening. It should be noted that this removes many small particles but leaves all whole shrimp. I repeated this for each treatment 10 times and got pretty consistent results. What I found is that a 10g portion of rinsed mysid shrimp (size of a typical cube) will raise the phosphate level of 100g of seawater approximately 0.001 ppm. The same portion of non-rinsed mysids will raise the phosphate level of 100g of seawater about 0.005 ppm. Delbeek and Sprung suggest keeping your level of phosphate below 0.045 ppm.

 

[jcw]

Great article. Great idea for the article.

Makes me wish i stocked fewer fish.

Makes me wonder, though, how the many people that have a high bioload and beautiful SPS manage the result of multiple heavy daily feedings?

I reviewed the phosphate removal article. Skimming, macroalgae harvesting and commercial products and GFO seem like things people are doing already. Still, some people run into problems and others do not. I wonder why?



I was watching youtube and that guy from ny with the heavy accent that does those instructional videos. He was talking about old tank syndrome and phosphate. Seems like to me, it all boils down to how much you feed and how quickly you can remove the phosphate before it encorporates in the live rock. Interesting...



Thanks!

 

[tmz]

FWIW,I manage a lot of fish over 40 of them with a little over 2ozs of mixed frozen food daily and additionally some nori and flake food every other day.The tanks are sps dominant. PO4 has been consistently under or at .05ppm with NO3 around 0.2ppm for the last several years . I use moderate organic carbon dosing( vodka and vinegar) , gac, gfo, a macroalgae refugium, several crytic refugia ,skimming and regular small water changes.

 

[Big E]

Thanks, Randy nice article.

On your example of the .05 phosphate in the Ro water..........top off, not a problem, but for someone who is doing water changes & counting on that to reduce phosphate it becomes an issue.

I've run tanks for years, including Sps reefs, only relying on water changes & a skimmer, no GAC, GFO, ect. so in this type of old school Berlin setup the .05 is signifigant if I'm trying to maintain .03 or below in my system.

A couple of interesting things that made me think---

--If fish urine contains most of the protein/phosphate like in humans, I wonder how much a skimmer is actually taking out?

--Do protein skimmers actually take out proteins? When I watch my skimmer work it's very effective at taking out particulate matter, but I have no clue what it's doing on a liquid level.

--This will make fish food manufacturers think twice when boasting about their protein content when most of it is just unused by the fish & turned into phosphate.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Thanks, Randy nice article.

On your example of the .05 phosphate in the Ro water..........top off, not a problem, but for someone who is doing water changes & counting on that to reduce phosphate it becomes an issue.

Sure, that's true. But counting on 0.00000 ppm phosphate salt water to reduce phosphate is also not very effective unless the changes are huge.

Starting at 0.05 ppm, a 10% change only drops it to 0.045. That drop is substantially less than you probably fed the tank that same day.

And that assumes there is no phosphate bound to rock and sand. Even a 100% water change with 0.0000 ppm water does not eliminate phosphate. Starting at 0.2 ppm phosphate and doing a 100% change might only drop it to 0.1 ppm due to the large reservoir on the rock and sand.

I've run tanks for years, including Sps reefs, only relying on water changes & a skimmer, no GAC, GFO, ect. so in this type of old school Berlin setup the .05 is signifigant if I'm trying to maintain .03 or below in my system.

I don't doubt it may be significant in some cases, but that depends on what you are feeding, not what you are measuring or the methods used exporting. If you barely feed anything, then yes, it may be large. If you feed a normal amount, then I don't see how it is significant at all, especially over time. You just have enough export or consumption to balance all the sources in your system. As I noted, 0.05 ppm used to do, say 30% water changes over the course of a month only contributes 0.0005 ppm daily, which is much less than you probably add in foods each day.

 

[HighlandReefer]

Great article Randy. :thumbsup:

 

[Ron Reefman]

Really good article Randy (as always). Good info and very well presented. I'm going to guess that the link to your article will get used thousands... maybe tens of thousands of times by experienced reefers here on RC and other sites, trying to help out new reefers who have phosphate and algae issues. Over my couple of years of being active here on RC you have only been a HUGE help! :thumbsup:

 

[Big E]

Sure, that's true. But counting on 0.00000 ppm phosphate salt water to reduce phosphate is also not very effective unless the changes are huge.

Starting at 0.05 ppm, a 10% change only drops it to 0.045. That drop is substantially less than you probably fed the tank that same day.

And that assumes there is no phosphate bound to rock and sand. Even a 100% water change with 0.0000 ppm water does not eliminate phosphate. Starting at 0.2 ppm phosphate and doing a 100% change might only drop it to 0.1 ppm due to the large reservoir on the rock and sand.



I don't doubt it may be significant in some cases, but that depends on what you are feeding, not what you are measuring or the methods used exporting. If you barely feed anything, then yes, it may be large. If you feed a normal amount, then I don't see how it is significant at all, especially over time. You just have enough export or consumption to balance all the sources in your system. As I noted, 0.05 ppm used to do, say 30% water changes over the course of a month only contributes 0.0005 ppm daily, which is much less than you probably add in foods each day.

Right, I understand from a numbers perspective, but the 10% weekly water change is also incorportating siponing out some detritus, some algae, & other phosphate inducing elements, so it has a larger effect than just if I was to siphon out water from the top of the tank.

The numbers still may be small but the system is Berlin, barebottom, small amount of rock, mostly dead coral heads are used for ledges, ect.

Given that, adding .05 fresh water to a tank that runs below that is counterproductive............but it definately does give one pause on how ineffective the water change is strictly from a reducing phosphate level.