Phosphates will not go down

[Marines_Wife]

So I have always fought my phosphates. ALWAYS. They have always been at least .25-.5 at the worst they were 1.0
I am feeding once a day, and I am finishing the rest of the mysis and pellets
I do a 25% WC every Thursday
I have a HOB refugium going
I do not have Ro/Di water, but I am using filtered water.

Any suggestions? Nothing looks stressed or unhappy, in fact everyone looks just fine. Except my BTA who thinks it is funny to hide from me. Other then a very minor outbreak of Cyano which I dealt with swiftly and has not returned, I have no other issues. I am at a loss.

 

[fastrd400]

Phosphate are coming from your food. Once it is gone and you are feeding different foods, along with your regular WC, they will come down. If you are stressed about it, you could go to your LFS and get some Phosban to run as well.

 

[Marines_Wife]

Ok. The pellets are gone as of today. The mysis came well after the pellets though and my phosphates have been high for always.....maybe the pellets is playing a bigger role then I thought.

 

[irensing]

Any food you put in the tank is essentially introducing phosphates whether it is eaten or pooped out. The pellet and mysis like others have mentioned might be higher than other foods. Do you have chaeto in your fuge? That should help. You can't beat ferric oxide (phosban) but you really need a slow flow reactor for it to work well. You can at least try putting some in a fine media bag where it gets decent water flow. You don't want it to break up into powder though. Also, I don't think 0.25-0.5 is all that bad. That's pretty much where mine runs and all my corals grow at a fast pace.

 

[irensing]

Also, from reading your other posts I think you're feeding way too much. You can probably feed every other day. I have a neon dottyback, longnose hawk, PJ cardinal, percula and saddle blenny and feed every 2-3 days.

 

[sen5241b]

Lots of cheato or phosphate reactor -take your pick its that simple.

 

[sen5241b]

Also, according to Dr. Shimek (Phd and coral expert) phosphates at 0.25 will start killing most stonies.

 

[Marines_Wife]

I do have chaeto in my refugium. I would like to get the phosphates down a bit more though. Preferably to zero. I have moved to feeding once a day, and I wouldnt mind skipping days in between in feeding, but I was advised that since my fish are so active that they needed more food, is this not true?

 

[irensing]

I'm not sure about food requirements for various fish but I've always done ever other day or more.

Also, I have more than 25 SPS and LPS colonies that have grown very rapidly in 0.5 phophates so it sound like Dr. Shimek should give me a ring.

 

[Dakwan]

algae scrubber?

 

[Northstar24]

You said you're using filtered water, are you getting it from a grocery store's machine, or are you actually buying bottled water? Have you run phosphate tests on the source water to make sure that its not coming from there?

 

[wontonflip]

Maybe the filters of water filterer are old, too.

I rinse my frozen food out in rodi before feeding. I never put food in w/o having rinsed it. It's an extra step, but it would eliminate one cause.