Phosphates

[dcombs44]

I'm getting to the end of my cycle, and was wondering why my phosphates would be high.

I have no livestock other than 2 hermits and a snail that came in on some rock. I have tossed a pinch of cyclopese in twice just for grins. I do have a couple of mushrooms also from the rock i put in.

I have a brand new RO/DI unit from purely h20. My TDS meter reads 0. Salinity is at 1.024 (refractometer tested)

But there are phosphates in my tank. Why?

 

[dcombs44]

bump

 

[sir_dudeguy]

what type of gravel you got? (sand, cc, etc)

 

[sir_dudeguy]

oh, and idk about cyclopese, but have you fed any flake foods to the tank? Or any frozen foods? Flake will often have phosphates, and that liquid that melts off of the frozen foods...thats got phosphates in it

 

[RichConley]

Everything you feed has phosphates. IF you've got any live rock dieoff, phosphates will come from that too.

 

[dcombs44]

Most of my rock was either from a 3 year old tank and from the LFS and almost totally cured. I had very little dieoff. I haven't fed any flake, just a bit of cyclopeze. I have aragonite sand substrate. I guess the only place it could be from is the rock. Im sure there was some dieoff in the 2.5 hour ride from my old house to here. Any other ideas, let me know....click my red house to see pictures and specs on my system.

 

[sir_dudeguy]

did you have the rock in water when you picked it up?

 

[dcombs44]

The rock that had mushrooms on it was kept in water. All of the new rock was wrapped in wet newspaper.

 

[neotekz]

adding food with nothing to eat it and some die off from rocks probably all contributed to increasing your phosphates being high. most tanks will go through this when they are first set up, u will go through a algea bloom and then your phosphates should decrease.

 

[sir_dudeguy]

ya i 'gree w/neotekz...2 and a half hours out of water and just in wet paper towels is prolly the cause of some die off, along with the food. And dont worry about the algae blooms at the beginning...i tend to just ignore them now and just make sure my nitrates and phosphates are down and they go away on their own.

 

[JRPhd]

Stupid question, but did you check the RO water for phosphates before adding it to the tank?
Jon

 

[dcombs44]

No i didn't check it. I just checked the dissolved solids. I was 0. It is a red sea test though, so the test could be inaccurate as well. I would think that the ro/di water should have no phosphates though. right?

 

[jdieck]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8242436#post8242436 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by dcombs44
Most of my rock was either from a 3 year old tank ....

I could bet it came from the old rock.

 

[dcombs44]

It's possible. I just wasn't sure about all the possible sources of phosphates. I know tap water, flake food, and I guess I assumed that anything dead would give off some. About the ro/di water though. My system should remove most everything, including phosphates from my water shouldn't it?

 

[jdieck]

Yes it shoud remove most if not all. Having said that it depends much on the way you operate the system. If you purge it for 5 minutes every time it starts you will be OK because contaminants pass to the product side while the system is off but pressurized.
THis is one of the issues when using a top off directly from the RO/DI unit.

 

[Peter Eichler]

What salt mix are you using? My guess is that it came at least in part from the old live rock though.

 

[dcombs44]

i always purge the ro/di unit, and it has an electronic tds meter on it that goes off at 50 tds. I always let it run a minute or so after the alarm stops. I use IO salt mix. It simply has to be from the rock die off, because i haven't fed enough for the amount of phosphates to show up from the food. I have a few mushrooms that were on the rocks that are survived the cycle and a couple crabs and snails. That's the only real reason I've tossed a bit of food in once in a while.

 

[jdieck]

How much Phosphate are we talking about?

 

[dcombs44]

The test reads between 1.0 and 2.0. I don't remember, but I think it's ppm, not ppt. I'll check when I get back to my place.

 

[jdieck]

Well anything above 0.05 is high to me anyhow. You know I was thinking that probably you may want to run some Phosphate removing media so it does not accumulate in the rock and sand for posterity. Better to remove it now than later.