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Thread: How do you lower phosphates when nitrates are 0?

  1. #11
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    Yes, in the same ratio that they are taken up by the algae. This is the heart of the issue. Unless your food is seeded with the perfect amount of N to offset the amount taken up by natural denitrification, you will end up continuing to increase P, at least to some level. Mine seems to plateau out around 0.16, I've never seen it above that but also never seen it below 0.05

  2. #12

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    Agreed, I have a rather "underpowered" scrubber. Almost two years (little to no water changes) I had a build up of P. I contribute it to that fact that the food we all feed has a ton of P in it. Took Floyd's advice got a hanna and tested at .31

    Been passively using GFO for a few weeks now and I test between .07 and .16
    I maybe be buying a reactor to see if actively running GFO would drop it further.

  3. #13

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    I will try to get a Hanna checker later on when I can afford one, for right now do you guys have a brand of inexpensive GFO you have had good success with?

  4. #14
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    Just want to confirm the live rock denitrification. I have an often repeated the story about an added sump that was full of crush coral. When I hooked it up, the N fell and my scrubber stopped working so P went up. My N was so low that I didn't get hair algae in the tank but P stayed high so I am disconnecting it.

    I am surprised though. In the old day of scrubbing, everyone had as much live rock as you do and everything was fine. Is you scrubber indeed too small or does in have too little light on it?

    GFO should work fine but I'd hate to have to futz around with that stuff if you are just under powered.

  5. #15

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    An ATS has single pass efficiency.

    I have already done this experiment and dosing ammonia can be done safely. I have dosed with ammonia for this same problem. I used a medical peristalistic dosing pump to meter it into the DT's overflow. This is a direct route to the ATS. My ATS is fed from two sides and the light bulbs run horizontally so cover both screens evenly. To determine if the ATS has single pass efficiency, I dosed only one side and compared the growth of the two sides after one week. The non-dosed side did not have any extra growth but the dosed side did. I repeated the experiment for two more weeks and had the same results each time. I then switched sides with the dosing and had extra growth on that side and the other side returned to normal.

    I have a 150g DT and I dosed four drops of ammonia per day. The ammonia was diluted into 100ml of water and dosed countinuously though out the day. I have taken water samples from below the ATS and all tested zero for ammonia. The ammonia dose was derived from someone elses experiences with cycling tanks by ammonia dosing (the dose may be increased or decreased depending on ATS size and maturity).


  6. #16
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    Wow very nice to know.

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