What Phosphate level is toxic to fish?

Lou Young

New member
I'm losing some baby clownfish at day 7-8 and all my levels are ok except the Phosphate. I'm assuming it's too high for the baby clownfish larvae. Anyone have any thoughts or advice?
 

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PO4 is way too high. It needs to be lowered. I'm surprised your adult fish can survive in that. Get yourself some GFO pads for your filter box or throw some Cheato in your sump to eat that up.

On baby clownfish: They will be lost. You can expect about half to die within the first 2 weeks, before they even start metamorphosis. That's when they get body color and start getting their stripe patterns. After that, you'll lose half of what's left in the next few months. When I was hatching Ocellaris, I'd get anywhere from 90-150 survivors after 6 months out of about 400 eggs.
 
PO4 is way too high. It needs to be lowered. I'm surprised your adult fish can survive in that. Get yourself some GFO pads for your filter box or throw some Cheato in your sump to eat that up.

On baby clownfish: They will be lost. You can expect about half to die within the first 2 weeks, before they even start metamorphosis. That's when they get body color and start getting their stripe patterns. After that, you'll lose half of what's left in the next few months. When I was hatching Ocellaris, I'd get anywhere from 90-150 survivors after 6 months out of about 400 eggs.

Thanks for the reply. That test is not from the parents tank. It's from one of the 10g Baby tanks. I think I may have dropped in some frozen food into their tank while feeding another one above it. I needed up losing about half of them but did 50% water change for 3 days and I haven't lost anymore. I'll have to be more careful feeding the top shelf tanks.
 
I don't think fish care much about the PO4 even at 2ppm(fry and ova might be more sensitive), like they do nitrogen from ammonia or nitrite. If excess food is the culprit , I'd suspect the nitrogen. Lowering the PO4 won't hurt them though and seems prudent. I didn't pay much attention to PO4 when I was raising amphiprion and seahorses.
 
Thanks for the reply. That test is not from the parents tank. It's from one of the 10g Baby tanks. I think I may have dropped in some frozen food into their tank while feeding another one above it. I needed up losing about half of them but did 50% water change for 3 days and I haven't lost anymore. I'll have to be more careful feeding the top shelf tanks.

One-off accident is probably what this is. I never had a PO4 problem with the little ones. I did test, but all I really cared about was pH, NH3/4, and NO2. You will lose more. It's just how it goes.
 
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