jlinzmaier
Premium Member
Recently read a thread in which a person was trying to nail down why his po4 kept rising. He checked all common sources and found nothing. He fed so sparingly he was starving his fish. It sounds like he did all his homework and ruled out all common sources of po4. As the po4 continued to rise he eventually tested is calcium reactor effluent. He was using carb sea ARM coarse media and the effluent reading using a phototmeter was 0.22. In most cases that isn't a huge contribution due to the overall low flow rates of ca rx effluent, however in his case his flow rate was pretty high and it seemed to contribute more po4 than what he was feeding to his fish. He changed his media to Gen-X media and the effluent po4 lvl was 0.02 - much better.
I, of course, ran down stairs and tested my ca rx effluent with my photometer and got a reading of 0.29!! My effluent rate is quite low and ultimately it doesn't add a significant amount of po4 in total. (I also run ARM coarse media). I'll be switching to Gen-X media to limit po4 even though the total contribution is pretty low (can't hurt to limit po4 from any source if you have the ability IMO). I'll post what results I get from the Gen-x effluent.
It sounds like Gen-x is larger peices of only coral skeletons. It's quite visible in the ARM media that there are several sorts of snail shells in there. I belive those types of shells are partially composed of po4 deposits and that may be the link to the media contributing the po4 as it's dissolved.
Jeremy
I, of course, ran down stairs and tested my ca rx effluent with my photometer and got a reading of 0.29!! My effluent rate is quite low and ultimately it doesn't add a significant amount of po4 in total. (I also run ARM coarse media). I'll be switching to Gen-X media to limit po4 even though the total contribution is pretty low (can't hurt to limit po4 from any source if you have the ability IMO). I'll post what results I get from the Gen-x effluent.
It sounds like Gen-x is larger peices of only coral skeletons. It's quite visible in the ARM media that there are several sorts of snail shells in there. I belive those types of shells are partially composed of po4 deposits and that may be the link to the media contributing the po4 as it's dissolved.
Jeremy