phosphate levels of water-change water
- Thread starter tnyr5
- Start date
rigleautomotive
Premium Member
I do.With IO it is usually approx. .03ppm if I am careful and start with a spanking clean drum that is kept sealed with a lid while filling and during the mixing.Paying attention to not contaminate the vessel is important.When measuring PO4 you really have to understand you are looking for a fraction of a part per million.This can be a drop in the bucket ,no pun intended and this will be enough to skew the results.
That being said,different salts have a fair amount of PO4 in them from the get go and this can vary between batches.ie RC has a higher PO4 level on many of the batches I have tested when compared to IO.I assume the impurities in the added minerals in RC have a impact on this.Again we are looking at a fraction of a ppm(with PO4) when compared to the concentration of mg or cal that are respectfully in the hundreds or thousands ppm.
Some use a gfo reactor on there mixing barrel to further reduce the added PO4 when using a salt with slightly higher PO4 levels.I must say though that a few studies I have been reading show no ill effect of PO4 in this range and actually positive results and faster growth with PO4 in the .1 ppm range(Chris Jury was working on one such study.I am not sure it is published yet)
I am glad to see you are getting in tune with your PO4.
Having a good feel of Alk,and PO4 when keeping corals is a plus IME
That being said,different salts have a fair amount of PO4 in them from the get go and this can vary between batches.ie RC has a higher PO4 level on many of the batches I have tested when compared to IO.I assume the impurities in the added minerals in RC have a impact on this.Again we are looking at a fraction of a ppm(with PO4) when compared to the concentration of mg or cal that are respectfully in the hundreds or thousands ppm.
Some use a gfo reactor on there mixing barrel to further reduce the added PO4 when using a salt with slightly higher PO4 levels.I must say though that a few studies I have been reading show no ill effect of PO4 in this range and actually positive results and faster growth with PO4 in the .1 ppm range(Chris Jury was working on one such study.I am not sure it is published yet)
I am glad to see you are getting in tune with your PO4.
Having a good feel of Alk,and PO4 when keeping corals is a plus IME
tnyr5
Active member
I figured that .03 ppm over the .05 where I usually keep my tank would probably get sucked up by the gfo in the system by the next day. My RO typically has .02-.03 ppm right from the tap. So an extra .03-.04 ppm gets it close to what I see. The rest is probably just from the air.
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