Phosphate Issue

Hello,

I was looking for some advice on lowering my phosphates a bit more in my tank. I had it setup as fish only, with LF, for a little over 2 years and I am working on switching over to a reef tank. During that time there was about 6 months where I used tap water for water changes because I moved and didn’t have an R/O unit, boy was this a big mistake, and I tested the tap water and it measured just over 2 PPM for phosphates. I started to look into converting my tank about 2 weeks ago and ran some tests. The phosphate reading was well above 10 PPM then. Since then I have done significant water changes, added some phosphate media to my canister, and added a refugium. Last night my phosphates were at 0.55 and nitrates were at ~ 40 PPM. This is a significant improvement for about 2 weeks but I was wondering if there is anything else I can do.

Another note is that I had a really thick sand/crush coral bed but I got rid of most of that. I took it from about 4 – 5” to just under an inch. Please let me know if you need any additional details.
[FONT=&quot]
Specs[/FONT]

• [FONT=&quot]72 Gallon Bow Front[/FONT]
• [FONT=&quot]20 Gallon Refugium[/FONT]
  • [FONT=&quot]800 GPH Overflow box[/FONT]
  • [FONT=&quot]800 GPH pump[/FONT]
  • [FONT=&quot]10 LBS Miracle Mud[/FONT]
  • [FONT=&quot]~15 LBS LR[/FONT]
• [FONT=&quot]Fluval 405 Canister (only being used for mechanical filtration and phosphate media currently)[/FONT]
• [FONT=&quot]2x Apollo Sunburst UV 5000 Manually Dimmable (Moon light 24/7, Blue light 9 – 9, White light 10 – 8)[/FONT]
• [FONT=&quot]~ 110 LBS LR[/FONT]
• [FONT=&quot]5 Stage R/O Unit[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]
• [FONT=&quot]Temp is about 77 – 78, controlled by titanium heater[/FONT]

 

I think you're doing all of the right things. With the live rock, you don't need the ceramics in your canister - I would take those out. Are you siphoning the remaining substrate when you do water changes. Just do small sections at a time.

Keep doing the water changes. Do you clean your canister with every change? If not, then you should e at least rinsing your media out.....

I've been in your shoes although the tank wasn't a FW but a SW and it was a journey bringing down my phosphate and nitrates from all of the years of using tap. Also kept a canister filter and eventually took it off-line.

 

I only vacuumed a little section of the sand so far, before that I didn’t have the vacuum setup for most of the water chagnes. Also the tank was SW before not FW but it only had fish nad LR. I did take the ceramics out of the canister and plan to only use it I need it for a reactor of some sort. I have been cleaning out the canister every couple days right now but before I only cleaned it about once every 3 – 4 months which may have added to the issues.

 

I'm sorry I misread that thinking it was FW for some reason. Yes, it did add to the issues by only cleaning out every 3-4 months (been there, done that ). Time is your friend in terms of bringing the phosphates down. I wish there was some magic bullet I could tell you to use but I wasn't able to find one. I ended up changing out some of my live rock and removed my sand bed and replaced it as a means to lower my levels. My problem was nitrate was I'm sure phosphates fueled it.

You may want to look at Dr. Tim's products. He is a sponsor on here. In hindsight, I may have looked into using some of that product to help.

 

Thanks for the advice i will look into them.