Reef Central Online Community

Go Back   Reef Central Online Community > General Interest Forums > The Reef Chemistry Forum
Blogs FAQ Calendar Mark Forums Read

Notices

User Tag List

Reply
Thread Tools
Unread 07/19/2018, 08:47 AM   #1
stephenhall1987
Registered Member
 
stephenhall1987's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2013
Posts: 236
Cooking rock (Phosphates) help

I have rock that came out of a high phosphate tank. I've been "cooking" it in a 50g vat and a 5 gallon bucket, with DI water. The bucket I'm changing the water 3 or 4 times a week. The vat gets a 100% water change once every week or two. I'm testing phosphates with a Salifert test. They are staying steady at 0.25 to 0.5. Source water tests 0.0 so I believe that the test kit is good.

Any Idea how long I should expect to have to keep this up? Any suggestions?


stephenhall1987 is offline   Reply With Quote
Unread 07/19/2018, 09:04 AM   #2
stephenhall1987
Registered Member
 
stephenhall1987's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2013
Posts: 236
All the organics are done decomposing. Ammonia, Nitrite, and Nitrate are all testing 0 now.
I'm not interested in doing the acid bath.


stephenhall1987 is offline   Reply With Quote
Unread 07/19/2018, 02:11 PM   #3
reefgeezer
Registered Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Wichita KS
Posts: 2,621
The decomposition may be complete or the rock may have cycled well enough to handle the nitrogen compounds still being created.

If you continue on your path of exporting the phosphate with water changes, the phosphates will someday be exhausted. It may be quite a while however. I would suggest you try Lanthanum Chloride to speed the process. That may require that you use salt water rather than fresh though I'm not sure. It still may take a few weeks to exhaust the phosphate. You might also ghost feed to keep the cycle going while the phosphates are treated.


__________________
John,

Current Tank Info: In-process, 90 Gallon SPS Reef
reefgeezer is offline   Reply With Quote
Unread 07/19/2018, 04:24 PM   #4
bertoni
RC Mod
 
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: Mountain View, CA, USA
Posts: 88,616
I agree with using lanthanum chloride (SeaKlear, etc) to precipitate the phosphate. The number of water changes required might be huge if that's all that you do to remove phosphate. Ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate can be converted to nitrogen gas over time, and leave the tank in that form. Phosphate can't outgas, so it takes more to remove it.


__________________
Jonathan Bertoni
bertoni is offline   Reply With Quote
Unread 07/20/2018, 01:20 PM   #5
stephenhall1987
Registered Member
 
stephenhall1987's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2013
Posts: 236
Ok, Thank you. I'll look into lanthanum


stephenhall1987 is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is On



All times are GMT -6. The time now is 09:11 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Powered by Searchlight © 2024 Axivo Inc.
Use of this web site is subject to the terms and conditions described in the user agreement.
Reef CentralTM Reef Central, LLC. Copyright ©1999-2022
User Alert System provided by Advanced User Tagging v3.3.0 (Pro) - vBulletin Mods & Addons Copyright © 2024 DragonByte Technologies Ltd.