PO4 Alternatives to Fleet Enema

[Timmain42]

Are there any? I can't seem to keep up with the PO4... the plants are sucking it down so fast I can't even seem to get a good reading/up to 1.0 concentrations.

Perhaps I should get another test kit other than Hagen to make sure I'm not just going nuts...

[Aquafreak]

How big is the tank? how much light and plant load have you got? how much co2? Have you cross checked your PO4 test kit with another brand? Some brands are better than others at particular things.

Each drop of fleet can come to around .25ppm in a 30gal tank. I doubt a bottle of fleet isn't enough unless you have a huge tank eating up tons of PO4. If your test results are correct then just keep dosing it daily to raise it up to 1ppm. Let the plants eat up the 1ppm daily, the plants shouldn't be starved.

HTH

[Timmain42]

Originally posted by Aquafreak
How big is the tank? how much light and plant load have you got? how much co2? Have you cross checked your PO4 test kit with another brand? Some brands are better than others at particular things.


240G w/ 30G sump and 50G of displacement=220G of water
1.7WPG (3.5WPG for a two-hour peak around lunchtime)
As for plant load, it's fairly light but growing fast, see - http://www.member.serverpro.com/~praxx42/fish/Panorama_6_01_03.jpg
running 25-33ppm CO2 during photoperiod

And no, I haven't been able to lay my hands on anything but a Hagen Po4 test as of yet. I realize the plant load is light compared to the size of the tank, that's why I'd like to get it (the PO4 dosing) under control before the lileaopsis fully spreads across the front.

[Aquafreak]

A good idea to try getting some water to your LFS and have another PO4 reading with a different test kit. Either your test kit isn't reading correctly or your just not putting enough PO4 in there, in a light plant load I doubt your plants with 1.7wpg could use so much PO4, that's if your dosing for 1ppm. With 34 or so drops of fleet it should raise your tank to 1ppm roughly. The cheap bottles of fleet would still last a fair amount of time considering the cheap cost of it from the pharmacy, so I'd stick with fleet if I were you.

HTH

[Timmain42]

Good, I thought I was loosing my mind.... I dosed 26 drops on Sunday, and then 30 drops yesterday evening.

This is what I get for having that size of a tank.

Gracias.

[cpr4cpu]

are you dosing anything else besides phosphate?
Potassium, Nitrates, iron, trace, carbon...?
Phosphate will be eaten up VERY quickly by some of the media materials in cannister filters too, like phosphate remover.
I use monosodium phosphate in my tanks, and I dose weekly with a partial water change. The rest of the ferts are done 2x weekly. And I don't come anywhere near the watts per gallon either. I have nice algae for the ottos though (part of the learning curve of dosing iron and phosphate)
Also, the Red Sea test kit is a decent "cheap" kit, but I recenlty upgraded to a LaMotte kit and the results very slightly on the 1.0 - 2.0 range. (Red Sea only goes up to 2)

[Timmain42]

Originally posted by cpr4cpu
are you dosing anything else besides phosphate?
Potassium, Nitrates, iron, trace, carbon...?
Phosphate will be eaten up VERY quickly by some of the media materials in cannister filters too, like phosphate remover...

Yes, Potassium in the form of No-Salt, 2 tsps a week.
Nitrates I don't need to dose, 'cause the fish make plenty
Fourish @ 20 mg/L a week
no dice on the filter system, it's a wet/dry with no additives, and I'm considering slowly turning the w/d into a Berlin system (maybe)