gfo alternatives

[Razor Ramon]

Sounds like you have a very pure water source and a very good salt mix !👍👍

[FishyFishy!]

Brett, if you want to try Fozdown, I have a brand new bottle that I never used because my filter sock holes didn't fit the 10 micron socks that I bought. I use Fauna Marine Ultra Phos 0.04 now, so you can have my Fozdown if you want to try it out.

Wai's usually carries Fozdown.

[lastlight]

How are you running the ultra phosphate 0.04? There are so many products now! How does its price compare to gfo? I certainly need to use something I'm at a whopping 0.24 at the moment but I barely have any coral yet.

[Frogger]

Originally Posted by lastlight

How are you running the ultra phosphate 0.04? I certainly need to use something I'm at a whopping 0.24 at the moment but I barely have any coral yet.

What are your nitrates at? Sometimes if your nitrates are low you will get a high reading on phosphates.

My phosphates were way up there when I first started my tank 3 years ago. I couldn't even control the phosphates with GFO and Fozdown. But my nitrates were undetectable even with the Red Sea Pro nitrate test kit. I started adding nitrates and my phosphates dropped right down and my corals coloured up.

Apparently nitrates were the limiting factor and once my tank had nitrates the inhabitants in the tank were able to use the phosphates and the phosphates dropped quickly to near 0.

If you have moderate to high nitrates dis-regard everything I said.

[lastlight]

I'm pretty sure all my dry rock is leaching generously. My test shows nitrates around 40ppm...

[TimT]

Since my name was mentioned I thought I'd chime in a bit.

A little bit of history...

I had an Acro/SPS/LPS culture system of 800 gallons. I put a lot of food into the system broadcast feeding the SPS and target feeding the LPS. I had lots of fish in the system as well as several tangs... Purple Sailfin, White Stripe Bristletooth, etc etc. I used HC GFO in a custom DIY reactor to control Phosphate but it was expensive... over $100 a month. I needed a cheaper method so I researched Lanthanum Chloride.

Foz Down was created because I thought, wow this stuff is great, it's safe, cheaper and much less work than GFO. It would make life much easier and cheaper for hobbyist's too! I should dilute it to a safe level and sell it as an effective means of controlling phosphate/algae/cyano. I diluted it because I had purchased a highly concentrated version for my Acro/SPS/LPS culture system. I didn't want to expose hobbyist's to the risk of overdosing it and consequently depleting the buffer in the tank. I did however make it the strongest version on the market and only added RO/DI water to it.

The LC is like other chemicals and comes in different grades... 99.00% pure, 99.90% pure, 99.99% pure and 99.999% pure. I chose to use the 99.99% pure version as it's not quite as expensive as gold but still reasonably pure. China is the main source of LC.

LC will selectively bind with Phosphates first, but since it's a chloride salt it will also bind with buffers, only if no Phosphate is present. Interestingly they use Lanthanum carbonate to remove Phosphate from people with end stage Kidney disease.

The best way to use Foz Down is to dilute it with RO/DI water and slowly add it through out the day via dosing pump to the main Display Tank. The dosage can be calculated by figuring out your tanks daily Phosphate production. I've tried the 10 micron filter socks and then went to the 5 micron filter socks. I did some tests and the precipitate will go through 10 micron and some will go through even the 5 micron socks. Eventually I just discarded using the socks and added it to the main tank. I ran bare bottom tanks so could see any build up but there was nothing other than the normal detritus. To sum up my experience with Foz Down... I just added it diluted directly to display tank via GHL dosing pump and did not worry about filter socks.

If anyone has any questions please feel free to message me.

Cheers,
Tim

[lastlight]

Thanks Tim. I do think I'm going to give it a shot after all. I don't have a doser just yet but I'll manually dose for the time being.