How much tap water phosphates is OK?

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Karlsbad

Sharkbait
Sep 23, 2003
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Chicagoland
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Well I finally got a phosphate test kit, unfortunately the shades on the card all resemble each other closely, and the hue(if that's the right word here, the colors on the test card are yellow and green, and my water is a light shade of blue)of the water in the actual vile is different than the test card :rolleyes:, but I'm pretty sure that I'm reading about 1.0

All the rubber suction cups in my tank always have a prety thick coat of yellowish slime even if I take them off and clean them every week. If I don't scrape my glass at least every two weeks it gets a thick coat of white stuff. My water stays clear as long as no sunlight hits it, though there's always a film on the water that you can only see when the filters are off. This is with no sunlight whatsoever, never running a tank light, and only incandescant lights in the room the tank's in and very little decomposing food, I pretty much only feed a few pellets at a time and then remove whats uneaten, and vaccuum all the gravel thoroughly every week at least. I live in the suburbs of Chicago, I suppose its possible that my water is still having phosphorous added to it to prevent freezing.
 

RTR

AC Members
Oct 5, 1998
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Braddock Heights, MD
Phosphates are becoming a routine part of water treatment (not at home for me yet, but the office had phosphates) in many areas. It is a buffering/anti-corrosion agent.

In planted tanks phosphates are more likely to be an issue than in FO. Planted tank folks tend to want K:N:p::20:10:1. If you start with tap water >1 on phosphates that may be difficult to do. But if everything else is okay, a bit higher phosphate won't hurt you - I bought phosphate-removing resin for the planted office tank and never had to use it. I did have to keep some fast-growing plants in the tank to help eat the stuff, which is not my normal practice.
 

RTR

AC Members
Oct 5, 1998
5,806
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Braddock Heights, MD
I'm sorry, I never gave numbers, which for me as well are iffy at best. Home is undetectable unless I add P, the office would have PO4 at >2 in the water. The heavily planted CO2 supplement tank would have ~1 or <1 by the end of the tank's week, >1 after water change. Without water sprite in the tank I would have some hair algae visible - not horrible, but visible. With a good stand of WS at one back corner I would not have noticeable hair algae (due in part to masses of Amano shrimp, Neocardina shrimp, otos -which don't do hair, and an SAE).
 
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