I Need Help

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xrobbx03

Guest
No matter what i have done i can not seem to get my phosphates down they are always at 2.0ppm. I use distilled water and the water tested reads 0.2 ppm of phosphate which is not bad at all. I have an aquaclear filter 2 power heads and a cpr bakpak skimmer. I have used phoslock and nothing has worked. The tank has been up for about 3 months now. Can someone help me? what could be causing the high phosphates and what are some other ways i can get rid of them.
 
murph145

murph145

Active Member
how often do u feed?
what do u feed your tank?
how often do u do water changes?
what kind of salt do u use?
up your water changes.... i uses phosguard pellets in a baggie in my canister and that seems to work.... feed less often.... clean your filters more often..... better skimmer
 
wilsonreef

wilsonreef

Member
I agree with murph..I also use phosguard in baggies. but you have to use enough to do the job. It will tell you on the bottle. And too how much you feed at a time. overfeeding is probably one of the easiest things to do. Just because everytime you walk up to your aquarium and the fish act like they're starving doesn't make it so....
 
X

xrobbx03

Guest
Originally Posted by murph145
how often do u feed?
what do u feed your tank?
how often do u do water changes?
what kind of salt do u use?
up your water changes.... i uses phosguard pellets in a baggie in my canister and that seems to work.... feed less often.... clean your filters more often..... better skimmer
I feed once a day around 3:30
I feed my fish Boyds Vita Diet
I do a 10% water change every week
I use oceanic salt
 
murph145

murph145

Active Member
what kind of fish do u have and what size tank? maybe your bio-load is high?
in all reality fish should only b feed every other day tops...
think about it they are in a small environment where they barely swim/exercise so they dont need to eat a lot of food
as long as they dont look thin they are fine so try cutting back to every other day and make sure they dont leave any extra food laying around phophates is from poor water / food waste/ and fish waste
lots of people overfeed cuz fish will always act hungry
 
X

xrobbx03

Guest
Originally Posted by murph145
what kind of fish do u have and what size tank? maybe your bio-load is high?
in all reality fish should only b feed every other day tops...
think about it they are in a small environment where they barely swim/exercise so they dont need to eat a lot of food
as long as they dont look thin they are fine so try cutting back to every other day and make sure they dont leave any extra food laying around phophates is from poor water / food waste/ and fish waste
lots of people overfeed cuz fish will always act hungry
i have a pair of percs and a YWG in a 38 gallon i feed the fish pellet by pellet for about a min and 95% of it gets eaten. I used phoslock which is the same thing as a phosguard or phosban and it hasnt even affected my phosphate level. I will try reducing feeding to every other day and also clean my filter out of any excess algea and scrape my aquarium glass.
 
murph145

murph145

Active Member
try feeding your fish some frozen foods they might like it better something with more vitamins liek mysid...
but yeah cut back the feeding for sure
how do u use the phoslock... do u place it in a canister?
other then that just watch feedings...
maybe change a lil more water and see if that helps
try testing the new salt water you mix to see what its readings are
 
X

xrobbx03

Guest
Originally Posted by murph145
try feeding your fish some frozen foods they might like it better something with more vitamins liek mysid...
but yeah cut back the feeding for sure
how do u use the phoslock... do u place it in a canister?
other then that just watch feedings...
maybe change a lil more water and see if that helps
try testing the new salt water you mix to see what its readings are
i tested the new water with the salt and it was at 0.2ppm i put the phoslock in a nylon bag and place it in my aquaclear filter in the last stage of the media. I just been tryin everythin and no matter what i do my phosphates seem to be up there
 
X

xrobbx03

Guest
i did a good cleaning of my filters and powerheads and scraped all the ways clean. In a day my phosphate has gone from 2.0ppm to 0.5ppm FINALLY. Looks like my skimmer started picking up on the foam production. Hopefully after this weeks water change their will be hardly any phosphates left.
 
X

xrobbx03

Guest
well my phosphates are rose a little again to 1.0ppm. I just dont get it no matter what i do i just cant get it down. I feed only every other day now clean all the filters weekly have a protein skimmer running and the water im using is distilled and is only reading 0.2ppm. Phoslock running in the filter doesnt seem to be helping. What are some other suggestions?
 
wax32

wax32

Active Member
ANY detectable phoshate in your makeup water is NOT GOOD. Get a new source of water or buy an RO/DI for your house.
Salifert's seems to work well for me.
 
X

xrobbx03

Guest
Originally Posted by wax32
ANY detectable phoshate in your makeup water is NOT GOOD. Get a new source of water or buy an RO/DI for your house.
Salifert's seems to work well for me.
but if its only reading 0.2ppm y all of a sudden a few days in its up to 1.0ppm something has to be wrong somewhere. I dont think that a phosphate of 0.2ppm is that harmful. I was thinking about adding some plants in there do you think that would get rid of some of my phosphates. I really dont feel like buying an expensive ro/di system.
 
murph145

murph145

Active Member
so did u get a different test kit?
what kind of water were u using?
i would add some macro algae to your tank if u dont have a sump something like grape caulerpa not chaeto though it gets everywhere
but deffintely any serious reffer will adventually need a RO/DI system
do u have an outbreak of nuicance algae?
 
X

xrobbx03

Guest
Originally Posted by murph145
so did u get a different test kit?
what kind of water were u using?
i would add some macro algae to your tank if u dont have a sump something like grape caulerpa not chaeto though it gets everywhere
but deffintely any serious reffer will adventually need a RO/DI system
do u have an outbreak of nuicance algae?
I didnt get a chance to get a different test kit yet.
I been using distilled water from stop and shop.
I do have some cheato in my main tank right now but it doesnt seem to be helping at all.
For the algea outbreak i do have some brown algea on my sand and some green algea on my LR but its not over taking the tank. I just want this phosphate to go away so i can get some corals in there.
 
murph145

murph145

Active Member
im thinking faulty test kit?>
i still have some hair algae and some algae on my substrate too and my PO4 levels come back at 0 on my test kit
ive had them get as high as 1 on the kit and my corals didnt seem to be affected
 
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