How Bad Is Po4 In A Tank?

[purple_jeep]

Hi all,

I'm new around here so go easy on me

We have 2 tropical tanks here in Melbourne Aus, one 3ft one 4ft both with external canister filters.

Now we just changed aquarium shops and they convinced us to get a full kit of Sera test kits.
And we found that our PO4 is through the roof!! over 10ppm in both tanks.

They have us doing 3 days of 75% waterchanges to try and get it down, turns out all the chemicals the previous aquarium shop put us on contained phosphate, even the bacteria (Amtrite Down). So hopefully this gets it under control.

But what does phosphates do to the tank?

Chris

 

[voo]

Plants use up phosphate, but even in a heavily planted tank they aim for only 2ppm. Too much and you're likely to get algae problems.

 

[andywg]

It isn't a great problem for the fish, but if you strt using high lighting for plants you will find a problem with algae. Most tap water will contain phosphates so water changes might not be the great answer they usually are (the presence of phosphates together with silicates and nitrates is the main reason for marine and reef keepers to use RO water).

 

[purple_jeep]

It isn't a great problem for the fish, but if you strt using high lighting for plants you will find a problem with algae. Most tap water will contain phosphates so water changes might not be the great answer they usually are (the presence of phosphates together with silicates and nitrates is the main reason for marine and reef keepers to use RO water).

Yeah I tested the tap water, it seems to be Phosphate free, we have just changed the lights in both tanks, thought they are using only a single tube each, the 3 ft has a special plant one the 4 ft is just a general purpose aquarium one

Nitrates were also high (off the chart) but they have come down, we hope the phosphates get controlled now that we are doing such massive waterchanges and only using water conditioner (AZOO which I tested for phosphates).

We did a 75% and 4 50% before and the levels didn't drop but we assume thats because the conditioner, crystals and bacteria we were using all contained phosphates.

Chris