Phosphate In Water

[b3cca]

Hiya,
Does anybody know anything about high phosphate in aquariums ?
 
when i got my tank the guys at the lfs gave me a bag to put in my filter said it was needed as we have high phosphate levels in our water here. Well he said it would need changing every 3 weeks. I have learnt not to listen to what they say and ask people here who actually know.
 
So do I actually need to do this ? looked on out water printout and can only find Phosophorus levles which are 0.86 mg/l. I don't even know is phosphorus and phosphates are the same tho.
 
I know from school (i think) that plants need phosphate, but would high phosphate even affect my fish.
I don't mind changing it every 3 weeks if needed but do I really need a phosphate remover ?

 

[Chad]

What he probably gave you was GFO or some other type of phosphate remover. Phosphates are particularly bad in reef tanks and in all tanks can contribute to algae growth. In some tanks high phosphate levels can also alter water hardness as they have an effect on calcium uptake.
 
That said...if your levels are .086 and you aren't experiencing any problems I would personally skip it. You can uptake phosphates through live plants or in marine tanks with macro algae. If you were running a reef tank I would say go ahead and run the GFO but if it's a fish only tank or a FW tank my personal advice is to skip it.

 

[Dazzer87]

In my tank I add phosphate, I have reasonably high lighting and well planted tank and have little visible algae (no glass cleaning required) but it does require me to pump in a bit of diy co2 to keep it balanced otherwise the inbalance causes the algae to grow. I think if your well planted and maintain a set period of lighting 12hrs or less you should be ok.

 

[b3cca]

Thnx, well I only have a 70 litre fw tank with a few anubius and java moss is all. I only have the lights on for 2 hours or so per day.
Well i took the old phosphate bag thing out anyways, so I'll just leave it out and see what happens then