lduncan

Nice attention to detail

Which type of bulb do you use? Double ended or single ended? What wattage? It would be interesting to see what's most popular. Maybe one of the mods could convert this into a poll. 400W SE 250W SE 250W DE 175W SE 150W DE Layton

That's what they mean. I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt here. If they truly meant exactly what they said when the product is used in it's intended environment, they would be wrong. Even the manufacturer of one particular brand of phosphate remover is aware of these phosphate grabbing organisms. Here he talks about algae, which can do similar death defying feats with bound phosphate:

Spontaneously changing form? You know it's the bacteria which is driving the change a lot of the time. They actively, and directly liberate bound P by secreting enzymes like alkaline phosphatases. They are more than capable of literally stealing it from the media. The manufacture is saying that in sterile conditions, once the media has bound P it will not release it again. Which is more or less true. That's the chemistry approach. But as soon as you introduce bacteria, that becomes irrelevant. They can still get it, they have to be able to. Then there are biofilms which can create environments which chemically "dissolve" P precipitates. They have a few different was of liberating P from seemingly "inert" substances. The bacteria are driving almost all the changes in P states in the tank. If they want it, they can almost always get it. Layton

Yip, so basically the media has held onto the orthophosphate until bacteria grab it to use and convert to organic phosphate. So how is it going to de-saturate pools of organic phosphate?

You mean that bleached coral look :-)

It may not release it voluntarily, but bacteria sure can steal it.

I know. I was just joking. And there probably isn't a lot of published stuff around on this particular topic. It's a bit too specific to aquarium, where you can actually control the photoperiod.

You know my references are about as shallow as a puddle.

Well that depends what source is fuelling the algae, it it orthophosphate in the water, or is it organic phosphate in the rock? From the same article you quoted above: And what if it's not the phosphate reduction which is clearing the algae when using chemical media? Layton

From "Spanky" on TRT:

Jeez this zeovit stuff is looking more and more religous (must be the American influence) BZ, I don't know Free organic phosphate is only converted to inorganic phosphate because an organism needs it in that form so it can use it. They don't go around converting free organic phosphate for the benefit of anything else. It's for them. It's not like Le Châtelier's principle in chemical equilibrium. I still maintain that inorganic phosphate only shows up in significant quantities when the sinks are full. I think I get what reef is trying to say in that second part, but it doesn't really make sense as written. What I think he's asking is is it possible to skim so much bacteria so quickly that there is not enough remaining in the tank to reproduce fast enough for the skimmer? I would guess the answer would be no. Most bacteria are fast at reproducing, especially when the conditions are favourable. There are a multitude of bacteria not only in the water, but also on the surfaces in the tank, i'd say these fixed bacteria are more than capable of reproducing fast enough to keep up with the most efficient skimmers. Layton

Saves on power too. Nutrient levels and light levels should be proportional, higher nutrients, more light, lower nutrients less light.

From Randy the chemist per chance? Think bacteria, bacteria, bacteria.

Ok just a few clarifications. We've been through the orthophosphate not existing until organic sinks are full thing before. And for all intents and purposes it's true. Just like you require bacteria to grab and hold/convert ammonia as soon as it's formed in the tank, bacteria will do a similar thing with phosphate, they will grab it as long as they have enough storage room (they grab much more than they need to support themselves). There are going to be trace amounts of orthophosphate floating around in transition, just like there is ammonia, but if the sinks are not full it's not going to be around for long and it's not going to be even close to detectable. When the sinks are full, it has more of a chance to float around before it is sequestered by something, or bumps into some media. This tiny amount of transitional inorganic phosphate has to dodge a mine field of bacteria and phyto, and then literally smack into the media to even have a chance of being held. In the scheme of things it's insignificant until the sinks become full. As for media not releasing phosphate back, it's got no choice in the matter. Bacteria are capable of freeing it, they have to be able to get it, and get it quickly. Just imagine if they couldn't for a second, that would mean that life sustaining elements like phosphorous would have been bound up in inert substances long ago. Layton

Well it doesn't remove inorganic phosphate directly. What it does is remove phyto and bacteria, along with the phosphate that it has bound. Then ofcourse, through reproduction, more bacteria and phyto grows to replace it, as it grows it absorbs any inorganic phosphate which is around, only to be skimmed and removed. So what it does is remove the largest source of phosphate (that bound in phyto and bacteria) which results in any excess inorganic phosphate being reduced as well, as long as the export is large enough. Chemical media doesn't do this very well. Layton

Well think of it like this. A skimmer can remove the most abundant forms of phosphate, organic phosphate, efficiently. Chemical media is most efficient at removing the forms which occur in larger quantities only once organic phosphate is packed to overflowing in the system. And it just happens that the chemical media remove the only forms which our test kits test for, so it seems to do the job faster and better. What happens when the chemical media have absorbed all the inorganic phosphate? There's still all that organic stuff left, but it's not so good at holding on to that type. A skimmer's going to easily outperform it. Also the skimmer is permanently removing it from circulation immediately. With media, the stuff is still in the circulation path, and can be attacked and liberated again by organisms. Layton

Maybe you need to find a way of getting the crap to the skimmer so it can be removed permanently?

I would dispute that. A skimmer is capable of removing more phosphate than any iron based remover is capable of. I've never had any real phosphate issues with my tank, and i've never used any chemical based phosphate remover. My phosphate has been below 0.015 on Salifert test, and usually completely undetectable, for all but a few of weeks ever since my tank has been running. All that using nothing but a skimmer. And I feed a lot. What's a good phosphate level? Completely undetectable is good. Some corals are better able to cope with high phosphates than others, but aim for undetectable. You're not going to kill a coral from lack of phosphate in a tank, as there are so many sources of it, and very little is required for growth.

First these removers are only really effective in removing certain forms of phosphate efficiently - inorganic phosphate. And remember that hobby test kits are only capable of measuring orthophosphates (inorganic phosphate). What happens when you add inorganic phosphate to a clean tank? Well the multitude of bacteria and phyto and organisms sequester it and convert it to organic phosphate (polyphosphate and other organically chelated forms). They'll happily do this until the organisms in the tank are saturated with phosphate. Once this happens you will notice orthophosphate hanging around longer, as the bioload has reached it's phosphate holding limit, and that's when you'll get phosphorous showing up on test kits. So now you have all this phyto and bacteria jam packed full of phosphate floating in the water, and attached to every surface in the tank. Then you add a chemical remover which is only really effective in removing the overflow of phosphate once saturation has been reached. So instead of spending money on chemical absorbers, what if you got a bigger or more efficient skimmer? That way you could remove more of this phosphate ladened phyto and bacteria faster, and target the whole problem. Think of it like draining a septic tank, as opposed to dealing with the overflow once it fills up. Of course then there's the iron in those chemical phosphate removers. But that's another story. ;-) Layton

but does it really fix the phosphate problem, or does it just mask it?

It's the best way. Dealing with phosphate problems come down to keeping the tank clean. Keep the sand clean and water clean and it won't be an issue. You can mask the problem by using products like chemical phosphate removers, but the issues comes down to removing detritus and keeping stuff clean. Layton

I bumped up the photo period last week from 6 hours to 8 hours to burn off some zoox, trying to offset the lack of maintenance Seems to be working, colours are already improving.

Sounds like the colour on you monitor is weird, it's just the normal common old orange sun coral. Fed it for a few months, it grew an extra couple of polyps, but I got sick of feeding it and it died slowly.

I chopped them in half a few years ago, and they are still 3 or 4 times that size.