Testing flake food in PO4 test

[skip_16157]

I put a little piece of my flake food in my PO4 test that I performed and it made my results off the chart.

Is this accurate and is it possible my flakes are making my po4 high? I try to feed only the amount that my fish can eat.

thank you.

Oh, it is Omega one flake food.

 

[fishfreek]

Is this accurate and is it possible my flakes are making my po4 high? I

Yes.

Although I would think maybe you should dilute the single flake some like maybe mixing it in some water and having it disolve and then test that water.

 

[skip_16157]

Well, I tested as you said and the results for my Omega One were PO4 2.0 or higher as they were off the chart. I feel like kicking some omega one a$$; if this was the cause of my frequents algae blooms.

We'll I guess I could have be taking proper measures to prevent this and once again I have to learn from experience.

Thanks for the help.

 

[WarOrks15]

I am not sure on how u are doing this but if you think about it putting one flake in 5 ml of water will have a bigger PO4 level then putting one flake of the same size in x gal of water. do you get what i am saying or am i just way off topic?

 

[dansemacabre]

Makes perfect sense WarOrks. The concentration of a flake in a test tube is far greater than a flake per N gallons. You'd need to develop some sort of ratio. It's a pain, but it'd be more accurate I think. About how many flakes do you put in at any one time? Let's use 25 flakes for this example. (because it's a nice easy number to work with!) so...

F = 25
N = 100 (number of gallons) so...
S = 378.43 (size of tank, in Liters)

you have a ratio of 25:378.43 ... 25 flakes to 378.43 Liters. [F/S]
So that's...
1 flake per 15.14L (about 4 gallons)
so... what you end up with is 1 flake for every 15,140mL
Let's assume you've got 5mL water in your test tube. You'd need a spec [if I'm not screwing this up, about 1/3028] of flake food to simulate the real impact on your tank. This is added every time you feed, of course. But the test you're running is nowhere near the amount in your tank. So the food will add phosphates, and may perhaps add to an algal bloom...but it's not making your tank levels shoot up over 2.0 everytime you feed.

You don't actually have to do this (not really worth it, at all), I'm just showing you the theory behind it. Because, even if my math is wrong, it's the same effect. A flake in 5mL of test-tube water is nowhere near the level of a flake per 3-5 gallons of water.

Disclaimer: I haven't done this [the math] in a few years, so if it's completely wrong, a moderator can remove it from the post.

[edit]Realized I used a variable twice for 2 different things, so I changed the flake count to 'F' ... was previously 'N' which I had defined as number of gallons. Then tidied it up after this change.[/edit]

 

[WarOrks15]

ya what he said. and another thing no 2 flakes are the same size so you would have to go for weight. a lot of work and i also would not think that the food is what is makeing you have problems.

 

[skip_16157]

Yes, the ratio thing makes perfect sense. But I was trying to find out why my PO4 got so high to begin with. If I feed them this food every day and then they digest it it will eventually have a PO4 impact to my tank (right?). I think this could be a good possibility that I get my algae blooms back in 2 weeks of a water change. SO this is my process of elimination.

frozen brine shrimp was hardly on the scale.

Thanks again

 

[dansemacabre]

I haven't been following your prior threads (if there are many recent ones), so forgive my ignorance:

Are you using RO/DI water? Or, have you eliminated all other possible sources of PO4?

 

[mojoreef]

Thier are lots of Phosphates in alot of different food sources. Flake foods are one of the worst, brozen brine and other simular are really bad also. P is something that you must control, it will not only create algae blooms, but it can actually cause your corals not to calcify.
Skip a little trick for foods with P04, soak them in a cup of ro/di water for a few minutes, then pour out the water and feed the food. the striped out water will pull alot of the P out of the food.

MIke

 

[skip_16157]

Yes I am using RO distilled water as I found my water was high in PO4. I now purchase waterfrom Wal-mart.

Thanks for the tip Mike.