Phosphate question

[HHN]

24 hours of dosing 2 x 2 ml of Costco vodka. Phosphate up to .65 now, but skimmer has started to skim much darker and a lot more. The white, cloudiness increased a bit. I bought a new API test kit as the one I had expired in Dec (just to eliminate that doubt). I also added a deli shrimp last night. Ammonia at .1 (maybe .05), Nitrites at 0 and Nitrates at 0. Ph down to 7.6. A lot of variables involved, but hasn't reduced phosphates yet and there were no nitrates to take out yet, so not sure what the increased skimmate is.

Photo of skimmate above

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[dizzyjay]

have you considered keeping the skimmer off? I don’t know that it’s necessary for the cycle and may actually prolong things. The shrimp should eventually breakdown and you should start to see trites & trates soon.

[HHN]

yes...I will after today. I had to keep it running for the vodka dosing experiment, which Ill stop today. It's possible/probable that the skimmer is just pulling out the ammonia i need for the cycle. I was hoping to see a noticeable drop in phosphates. It's hard to see. I could actually be taking phosphates out, but they are just being replaced/leached back in.

[HHN]

For those still interested. 48 hours of dosing with vodka had no affect on my phosphate levels; still at at .65ish. The white, cloudy ?bacterial? bloom is much less now too. The bucket of same sand outside is at the same phospate level and has maintained same levels. Not exactly a scientific experiment. But I was curious if a cheap vodka could quickly solve a phosphate problem. Ammonia has spiked. I am turning of skimmer and moving on to Chaeto. Anyone in North County want to donate some to "the cause"? ( I should probably add that my Alk went from 7 to 8.25 (8 and 8.5 on two readings).

[Kris]

Cheap Vodka is for other problems, there are lots of case studies in the literature about that.

Also, whatever method(s) you employ to lower phosphates will take a bit of time. How much time is going to be a function of the rate of removal by either vodka, skimming, chaeto harvesting, GFO or other binding mediums that you may employ to sequester and remove the phosphate out of the aquarium. You started the system by adding sand & rock from established tanks that came with the phosphate load you are now trying to export.

The methods you are employing will likely take weeks or months to lower the phosphate level down to where it is safe to add sps. I hope that it goes faster but wanted to let you know it will likely take longer than a couple of days to see the problem disappear.

Thanks for reminding me, I need to go check my own parameters.

[Redryder87]

Yeah, vodka takes a while to start working. Since your tank is new, I would honestly just wait a month and check again. If you’re really worried about it, just use Red Sea NoPox. Works great. But ide wait for your tank to establish.


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[HHN]

Experiment aspect has been put on hold due to a quickly changing tank....but between, huge algae bloom in sump (which I scraped out), some slowly growing chaeto and 2, 30 % water changes at the end of the cycle, i have reduced the phospate to .21 (from .68 in its "heyday"). Going to start running GFO now.

[HHN]

Hope this is useful. Instead of running GFO, I dripped about 20 caps of Phosphate E into my emergency drain pipe (exits next to skimmer) over a two week period. Was able to drop phosphates down to zero (. to 0.08 in first week and 0,now). I have been scraping algae out of sump and have had manageable algae blooms in tank. Nitrates have been at zero ever since it cycled (probably tied up in algae). But, I think I have the phosphates under control.

[Kris]

Nice report! Remember to add new critters slowly to avoid setting off new cycling events . Especially fish, which require feeding which will fuel phosphate & nitrogen addition.

Also, there is a lot of back and forth discussion among reefers about having detectable amounts of P and N in the tank vs ZERO nutrients, as corals require these nutrients to grow.

More to say but my wife is after me to do chores.