Phosphate that won't go away

[tebo]

Garf greetings, my tank is mounted to the year and I have only my ats, with excellent results, a few months ago I made a mistake, which resulted in a huge increase of NO3 and PO4 little

It is certainly what happened Floyd, remember that my tank was always in balance, N 1.1 to 2.2 ppm P 0.02 to 0.06, after the disaster with food, inceased my no3, what surprises me is how slow low, truth is very slow

So I can assume that my limitation is the Po4, continue incrementing with potassium phosphate

regards

[Garf]

Don't want to upset anyone here but I think this potassium thing is a red herring, just can't find any scientific data to support it. Yeah, sure there is potassium deficiency in ground soil, but in seawater with a 400ppm?

[srusso]

I cover why I feel it's a potassium limitation in my theory document, I am working on the seventh draft of it and hope its done soon. This weekend should make a big difference.

[Floyd R Turbo]

We ask for honesty and appreciate it. Seems that it appears to be working at least in one case. As soon as I get my test kit I will tell you what my levels are at. But if K was fully depleted, you would think other things were going on. Perhaps there is a threshold or a linear relationship that affects this limiting situation. Say if K is half what it should be, P uptake drops propotionally or something like that. Talking out of my rear here.

[Garf]

I cover why I feel it's a potassium limitation in my theory document, I am working on the seventh draft of it and hope its done soon. This weekend should make a big difference.

Pm me this theory doc please soon as your sorted .

[srusso]

Only have three reagents left! Just placed an order for more, it looked like I had more then I thought in the tiny box... just going to take longer then I have in reagents. When should I test?! I wanna see what it reads, but feel I should wait till tomorrow. Scrubber growth is now green in places that had become brown earlier in the week. Coral growth is great, and I really wanna know what its reading now but I think I should wait till tomorrow, then test again Tuesday, and again on Thursday... hopefully the order is here by next week end...

[Garf]

The Redfield ratio states a 16:1 nitrogen to phosphate ratio;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redfield_ratio

But Randy H Farley says something more in the region of 100:1;



Anyone got a reasonable explanation ??

Found an answer to my own question ;

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15141209/

[Ace25]

Nice find! Thanks for the link.. very good read. You are on a roll today with good links.

Just got my potassium test kit and ran a test. Very easy test to do and very distinct color change right at the drop mark, no guessing at all. So my test results.... 16 drops which = 340. So my K levels are low. Not sure how much of difference 340 vs 400 makes, but I have a jug of potassium to dose so I can raise it up. I got my phosphate levels down to .13 using lanthanum yesterday and stopped dosing it. Going to test one more time tonight to make sure I get a couple consistent phosphate readings and then I will start dosing potassium and check levels a couple times a day over the next week.

[RkyRickstr]

One more thing to test.. darn.. and i though a scrubber would kiss the tesying goodbye.

[srusso]

THIS MORNING TEST:

0.01