Phosphate

[kodiak23]

Well I decided to take today off to celebrate the Niners victory yesterday, but Kyle Williams played!!! Damn it!!!

So instead of celebrating I decided to test the parameters of my tank, so fun.

I recevied my new Hanna Checker for Phosphate today and have been waiting paitently cause a few of my zoas have not been looking good the last few days and had a feeling it could be the phosphates (or too much flow).

Anyway, I did my first test and it came back 0.00, ouch!!

So I removed my GFO and fed some Mysis without draining the water and waited an hour.

Tested again and its .04 I am thinking I should cut my GFO in half. I dont want to remove it all together, thoughts?

Other parameters.

Salinity - 1.025
Nitrates - 0
Calcium - 460
Alk - 8
Magnesium - 1360

I also run Carbon in a bag and bio-pellets in a reactor.

 

[Grant W]

Sounds like you're on the right track Cody. BTW the little mille is doing good and has full polp ext. Now to grow that little guy out.

 

[smoq]

When my hanna meter shows zero I always repeat the test and it usually shows something in 0.01-0.03 range. Unfortunately this meter has a +/-0.04 tolerance.

 

[GiantBen]

So I'll sound like a noob, but I though 0 phosphates was the proper target? Am I missing something?

 

[Grant W]

I'm no expert but I've found 0 to be too clean. I think about a 5 for nitrates and .005 for phos is better for the health of the corals. I'm sure others will disagree but thats what I've found. The coolest part of all of this is we've actually gotten to the point in the hobby were we can over clean the water and even overlight the corals. Good example on the lighting is Red Planet, if you overlight it, all red ,if you lower the lighting its exposed to you get the green combination. Pretty cool if you as me. Grant