Sea Weed and Phosphate

[Black X]

I have been struggling to get my Phosphate levels below 0.2. I have a couple of tangs and a couple of angels and feed them one or two sheets of sea weed every morning. The other day I forgot to give them any and my Phosphate dropped to 0.1 within 24 hours. I feed them a sheet the next day and it was back up to 0.2.

Can sea weed really effect your Phosphate levels that much?

[Black X]

No sea weed for another day and my Phosphate levels have dropped even further. Getting close to normal now.

[555combo]

Which one are you using?

[Black X]

I'm using the Two Little Fishies green and purple.

[fsamir]

AFAIK all seaweeds will do this, since they use phosphate heavily to build their bodies.

The amount it will affect depends on volume and quantity of algae added. As your herbivores will still need plenty of it, the best thing to do is to improve the PO4 processing of the system or just ignore it, if it isn't causing problems.

[Black X]

Dosing Lanthanum but struggling to get low levels.

[wayne2.0]

In older tanks it often takes time to bring the level down, resist the temptation to dose to much Lath

[Black X]

I have good levels now. Ever since changing my lighting everything else seems to be working as well.

[TbyZ]

All food has phosphate.

Your lighting change may have increased photosynthesis & lowered your PO4.

What about your lighting did you change?

[Macca_75]

I'm not sure dosing lath to get to really low levels is the best idea. Lath is great for getting towards the low levels, but maybe look at other controls for maintaining low levels.