- Phosphorus is vital to all life on Earth.
It's in every living thing,
and without it life as we know it would be impossible.
It's a required element in our reef tanks,
it's the bane of many aquarius existence.
Hi I'm ReefMan, and this time it's all about phosphorus.
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I try to get a new video like this one,
you know about every weekend or so.
So in water,
phosphorus is almost entirely found as phosphate.
Phosphate is just a chemical.
It's one phosphorus atom,
and then four, four oxygen atoms.
And it's so common in water,
because of the minor fact
that pure phosphorous will actually explode
and catch fire if you have it in water.
It'll even do it just if you leave it out in the air.
So, you know elemental phosphorus
is not something you're gonna find,
even in small amounts in our tanks,
and really in the whole world.
So, what you will find though,
is all the different compounds of phosphate.
Phosphate compounds are generally organized into two groups,
depending on the other elements that it's bound up with.
Those two groups are organophosphate,
which comprises all of the organic life chemicals
that contain phosphate,
and they're found in your cells.
And orthophosphate,
which is all of the inorganic things that contain phosphate,
that you might find like in a fertilizer,
or something like that.
Organophosphate, and again that's the organic chemicals.
They are things like DNA, ATP,
which is how our cells store energy.
Lechetin, which is a fat that's found in your cells.
And a lot of your bodies proteins also contain it.
It's required by and found in every living cell
in the entire Earth.
You can sometimes actually remove organophosphate
from your tank via skimming,
because your protein skimmer
can remove proteins and things like that,
before they get a chance to break down,
and then release their phosphate into the water.
A lot of organophosphate's
actually break down into inorganic phosphate,
once they're no longer inside a living cell.
Organophosphate won't be detected by most test kits,
and even if you could detect it,
there's not going to be really any way
for you to actually remove it from your tanks water.
On the other hand,
orthophosphate,
and that's the inorganic phosphorus compounds
like what you might find in fertilizer,
this group of phosphate chemicals
are very easy to test for.
And that's what all of your test kits
are gonna be detecting.
It can also be removed pretty easily from our tanks,
using things like GFO or Lanthanum Chloride.
Orthophosphate is found in concentrations
around one part per billion or so,
on the surface of the ocean in wild reef waters.
And just like organic phosphates,
there's several different kinds of orthophosphate,
and the mix of those chemicals,
will actually depend on the PH of the water that they're in.
As the PH changes,
those compounds will also change.
Now, it's worth noting here,
that if your reef tank is right around a PH of 8.4,
orthophosphate's are actually gonna bind to the rock
and the aragonite that's in your sand,
and this will of course reduce the phosphate
that's left in the water.
And that's usually a good thing, right?
Except your PH is not always going to be 8.4,
and when it's not,
it's going to be released back into the water,
which can cause some headaches
from the sudden boost in inorganic phosphate.
You know with the algae,
and things like that that are no good.
The main source of phosphorus in most reef tanks
is actually gonna be the food
that we feed our fish in coral.
It can also come in through the water that you use,
but I think most of you are probably already using
a reverse osmosis filter with a diazotization stage.
Remember, if the filter media is old,
it might be leaking phosphates out into your water.
Something to keep in mind as your filters age.
But, you know generally the main source
is gonna be food.
Some fish in coral food
can actually be over 1% phosphate by weight,
and even fresh seafood
like I use in my homemade food, link above.
Can sometimes be sprayed with phosphate
to preserve it in the store.
Not really the best, but they do it.
So, always rinse your seafood,
and by doing that of course you'll get rid
of any preservatives that they might have sprayed on it,
before it makes it into your tank.
Now, your reef tank will do well
from about zero
to about 30 parts per billion orthophosphate.
Over 30 parts per billion phosphate,
is actually going to start to impede your corals ability
to create the calcium carbonate
that it uses for its skeleton.
And your acropora and other SPS corals of course,
if they can't grow their skeleton,
they're not gonna grow and that's not good.
It's also not good to have zero phosphate in your water.
After all, it's required for life.
You should target somewhere on the range
of one part phosphorus,
to 16 parts nitrogen in your water.
And that's something called the Redfield Ratio.
Don't worry if you can't get it exactly that,
just sort of keep it in mind as a ballpark thing
to aim for.
Algae loves phosphorus.
And if you've got too much phosphate in your water,
you're very likely also dealing with an algae problem.
In fact, growing and then removing macro algae,
is one of the best ways to reduce phosphate
in our reef tanks.
I use a PaxBellum algae reactor,
but there's numerous ways to do this
from reactors like this one,
to refugia with a ball of chaetomorpha just in it,
to algae scrubbers that attach to your tanks plumbing.
The end result is the same for all of these methods.
You're gonna grow some algae in your tank
in a place that you can easily remove it,
which in turn removes phosphates and nitrates,
and other pollutants from your tank.
The best way to figure out how much phosphorus
you have in your water of course,
is by testing.
And you want a test that you can do at home,
you want to test this easy and quick.
And one of the most accurate ways to test this,
is by using the Hanna Ultra Low Range Phosphorus Checker.
Phosphate checker, sometimes it's phosphorus,
sometimes it's phosphate,
it's the same thing.
Now, this thing can detect orthophosphate
in the range from zero to 200 parts per billion.
And you can get this little device for about $50 online.
Remember, as algae grows,
it will strip a lot of the phosphate out of the water.
So, even if you have one of these things,
it could read low if you have a lot of algae
growing in your tank.
There are some kits that will detect both inorganic
and organic phosphate.
The Hach PO-24 test kit,
can test for so called total phosphate,
but it's not a test that's for the faint heart.
It involves using ascorbic acid,
which you're gonna heat over a stove
to break apart organic phosphate compounds
into their easier to detect inorganic phosphate components,
and then you run the same sort of tests
that this checker does.
That checker, the Hoch PO-24,
is gonna cost you about $200 online.
So thanks for watching.
Stay tuned and check out my reef elements playlist,
for more videos that concentrate on a single element
like this one did.
I hope you really enjoyed the content,
and I will see you next week.
Have a great day, bye!