Struggling With High Phosphates Again

[Akasha72]

Hi all, please excuse the long explainations here but it's all info we need.
 
So I noticed a few days ago that some if my fish had the weird flukey things again and it prompted me to test my water. I had this in my fish a good 18 months ago and no-one seemed to know what they were. I even photographed them and my lfs sent the images to one of their contacts at a fish medicine lab ... nothing came back. They were treated for fish lice, flukes, and pretty much everything external known to the hobby but nothing got rid of them.
 
It was soon after that I lost the will with the hobby. My tank was blanketed in BBA, my fish were lethargic with these weird flukey things and I was close to giving up for good. It was then that the lovely guy at MA told me about phosphates. I got my phosphate tested and it was off the scale. But where was it coming from? I armed myself with my own po4 test kit and tested my tank again followed by my tap water. I was horrified to find my tap water read in excess of 1.2ppm for po4. After much deliberation it was decided that the best option was to start running a phosphate remover as I live in a first floor flat, my car is 25 metres away and I've got joint and muscle problems. All this meant RO wasn't really an option and so I bought a po4 remover. 
 
At first I tried the JBL one. It was orange in colour and went into the filter. It did very little to my readings for po4. Then my lfs gave me a sample bag of a NTLabs po4 remover and this was white .... it did the trick. After much chatting on another forum I learned removers come in differing types. One is iron based (the orange coloured type) and the other is Aluminium based (that's the white one) 
After a while of running the remover and getting my po4 down to a safe level I noticed the weird flukey things just disappeared. The fish were more energetic too. I got the SAE's to eat the BBA and all was great.
 
Now fast forward to this week, I've spotted the weird flukey things so I tested my tank. The po4 is reading at the top end of the scale again. I was cleaning a filter anyway so I add a fresh bag of the remover. Come forward two days and I re-test and the po4 hasn't moved at all.
I've just tested my tap water again and it's even higher than it was 18 months ago. I don't stand a chance.
 
Here's what I got. The bottle on the left is the tap, the bottle on the right is the tank
 

 
the kit card reader
 

 
So, it looks like I'm going to have to add a second dose of the remover. I don't want my fish to be ill and I certainly don't want the BBA back.
 
So basicly I'm here to ask for some help. Can anyone suggest a better option? Is there anything new on the market that I've not heard of. Can anyone come up with a sensible solution. What I need is something to add to my buckets on water change day to remove it before it's even added to my tank!
I can see if I can't get this back under control I'm going to have to turn to RO and just buy it in small amounts ... I'm really at a loss now 
 
 

 

[Zante]

Hmm... it's a saltwater product, but in theory it should work also for freshwater: biopellets. You might have to start dosing nitrates though.
 
Basically the plants and bacteria that consume nutrients consume them in this ratio: (i might be slightly off here, I'd have to look it up)
108 parts of carbon
16 parts of nitrate
1 part of phosphate
 
That means that for each gram of phosphate plants and these strains of bacteria need 108 grams of carbon. Usually we're talking CO2, that is why plants grow quicker with CO2 injection, in an aquarium usually the limiting factor is indeed the carbon.
 
Biopellets are made of a polymer that is basically a source of carbon for these bacteria. They grow on the biopellets and eat them together with nitrates and phosphates in those ratios. The reason I said you might have to dose nitrates is that if you have a ratio of (for example) 16 nitrates to 2 phosphates, the bacteria will consume the 1 phosphate that match the 16 nitrates and leave the other 1 phosphate there.
 
Before you try this though, there is a cheaper way to test it: carbon can also be provided in the form of vodka or vinegar, but it has to be dosed regularly every day, or the bacteria go hungry and start dying. I'd suggest vinegar, because you need more of it than vodka and that makes it easier to dose.

If you remind me of the sizes of your tanks I can tell you how much vinegar to dose to get this thing working and see if it makes a difference.

 

[Akasha72]

Hey Zante, I was hoping you'd pop by and help me. You were the one that gave me the most help with this before when it was going stupid. 
 
My tank is a rio 240 so it's 240 litres, I'd guess allowing for my sand, rocks and wood there's around 200 litres of water but that's only guess work. 
 
When you say vinegar are we talking the sort you put on your chips or the white stuff that you use for unblocking drains?

 

[Akasha72]

I'm currently researching on the net and just reading about Rowaphos, anyone tried it? 

 

[Zante]

Hey Zante, I was hoping you'd pop by and help me. You were the one that gave me the most help with this before when it was going stupid. 
 
My tank is a rio 240 so it's 240 litres, I'd guess allowing for my sand, rocks and wood there's around 200 litres of water but that's only guess work. 
 
When you say vinegar are we talking the sort you put on your chips or the white stuff that you use for unblocking drains?

 
I'm talking about the clear stuff that sells for pennies and is used to clean stuff. Distilled 5% pure vinegar.
This table should help you with the dosing

 
The numbers in the table are millilitres to dose every day and the gallons are merkin gallons.
If it's for your 240 litre tank I'd call it 60 gallons.
Use the 50 gallon column and if you need to increase the dosage when you're further on. A bit of an overdose doesn't do much, it is small quantities... well, until you reach the larger quantities, but by then there is a well established bacterial population that will take care of it.
 
It will take quite a bit of time to see a difference, and if you decide to stop you will have to do so slowly, or you'll have a massive death of the bacterial population that used the stuff and you'll have a nutrient spike.
 
 

I'm currently researching on the net and just reading about Rowaphos, anyone tried it? 

 
Don't like it. You need a reactor with the precise amount of water flow or it will fill your tank with iron oxide dust (if too much flow) or it will compact into a lump and won't be effective in removing the phosphates. If you get it right it's good, but you have to get it right.

 

[Akasha72]

I'm a bit confused. Am I to add distilled vinegar to my fish tank? Won't that harm the fish? and of course make the tank stink too lol
 
Also the list of numbers ... is it in ml .... ie week 1 (day 1-3) 1.6 .... 1.6 what? 1.6 ml? 1.6 lt? bit confused and I'm terrified of killing my fish!

 

[Zante]

It is indeed 1.6 ml as I said in my previous message. If it were vodka it would be 8 times smaller, that is why I suggested vinegar, larger quantities are easier to dose.
 
Don't worry, it won't do anything to your fish. With my reef (150 gallons) I got up to dosing 100ml per day before I decided to stop and use biopellets instead. If you're concerned you can put it at the filter outflow where it will be immediately dispersed.

 

[Akasha72]

okay ... well I trust your advice and you've never let me down in the past so I'll get some if I can this week (if I can find it in the supermarket lol!) 
 
Once I get it down I can keep it down with the remover - or do I need to remove that? Will the chemicals interact badly? It's the NTLabs one 
 
http/www.ntlabs.co.uk/products/Marine%3A-Phosphate-Remover-Media.html

 

[Zante]

The remover will not react with the phosphate, but if you really have that much phos in the tap water, I'd say it's something you'll make part of tank maintenance, not just a temporary solution.
 
Also, as I said, if you want to stop dosing vinegar, you'll have to stop gradually or you'll have a massive die-off of bacteria that used to feed on it. Obviously the more you dose the larger the bacterial population and larger the spike if you go cold turkey.
 
Just one word before you actually go ahead and do it: I've done it in my marine tank and it worked fine. The principle is sound also for freshwater  so it should work fine, but I haven't tried it myself.
 
... now I'm tempted to try it myself with my discus, tomorrow I have to go shopping anyway... hmm...

 

[StevenF]

Do you have a planted tank?  If  so and the plants are doing growing well they should easily soak up the phosphates.  If the plants are not soaking it up ,which is what appears to be happening, something is slowing the growth of the plants.  I had the problem in my RO water tank plant growth was slow or intermittent.  gradually phosphate levels would rise and start causing problems.  I was dosing the RO water with Aqueon mcro/macro fertilizer.  If I didn't the plants would die (RO water is too clean for plants to grow).  I recently change to Seachem Flourish which had all the same elements in it, plus one (copper)  
 
Now I have constant steady plant growth and my phosphates are staying very low and my algae problems have disappeared.  mulm buildup in the substrate also appears to have slowed. In fact  I will have to trim one plant soon..  Perhaps your plants (if you have them) are depleting one or more of the micro elements  in your tap water. Causing plant growth the slow and fail to keep up with nitrogen and phosphorous that is getting in.  
 
Note if you don't have measurable nitratees in your water it might also be good  dea to add Seachem nitrogen to the Seachem Flourish to creat a situation where the plants have everything they except phosphorous.  Also I have shrimp in my tank and the copper has not affected them.

 

[Akasha72]

Hi Steven. This is my tank - photo taken recently before a prune
 

 
 
As you can see I've got no problem with plant growth and I'm very well planted

 

[Akasha72]

I've just re-tested my water and it's come down a bit since yesterday. Maybe I'm not giving the remover time. That said I need to do a water change today and so I'm just adding back fresh water containing phosphates of 1.2-1.8!!

 

[gmc1]

That's strange.you have excellent plant growth.

 

[Akasha72]

okay so I've just done my 60 litre water change. The good news is I've finally got my nitrates down to around 20 ... phew. The bad news is I retested the phosphate after my water change and the gains I'd made over night have been lost - I'm back to where I was yesterday *sigh* 

 
I so want to swear .... I'll mutter quietly to myself though
 
I've opened my other filter and added another media bag of remover so both my filters are running fresh media bags of remover now. I'll give it a few days and re-test again.
 
And this it the point where Akasha holds up her hands and admits to you all - I Dropped The Ball. There I said it. I'm a bad fish keeper lol 

That's strange.you have excellent plant growth.

 
The plants are great gmc - now that the SAE's are eating the BBA that is. I just think I could fill this tank with plants and fill it with floating plants too and there'd still be excess phosphate. It's coming out of my tap at 1.6-ish and anything over 0.8 is bad for fish. I don't stand a chance of lowering it as everytime I water change I add back what the remover has taken out. I think the only way would be to add fresh remover with every water change and that would make RO the cheaper option

 

[Zante]

If you have phosphates in the tap water you will keep adding them at every water change.
 
Unless you want to keep fighting it with the phos remover resin you might want to give the vinegar a try.