Plant and Carbon/Bio-chem Zorb/Phos-Zorb

[Floyd R Turbo]

I just got a canister filter for my established planted community 55. I have read somewhere that you should not use carbon as it removes essential elements used by the plants, is this true?

What about Bio-chem Zorb? Does this do the same?

Also, I have an ongoing Phosphate problem, haven't pinned down the source but I'm guessing it was my driftwood which has been removed, and I'm still monitoring and getting high phosphate levels in the 55, versus my 10 fry tank which has almost none. Will phos-zorb work against healthy plant growth as well? I know some is needed, I use Flourish weekly (the regular kind) but that supposedly does not have enough in it to cause 5 ppm readings which is what I am getting.

 

[timwag2001]

have you checked your tap water for phosphates?
phosphates are in fish food too. are you overfeeding?

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

LFS says it's in the tap water but I've never seen it, even after letting sit for a week to make sure chlorine has offgassed. I have a 10g fry tank with a ton of fish, when I first set that up I was pulling water from the 55 during water changes since our tap water is nasty, and the phos was the same in both. AS soon as the fry grew enough I started doing tap water changes on the 10 and the phos dropped to 0.25-0.5ppm within a week. 55 still at 5 ppm. I had over 60 fry in there at one point along with 20 snails (hitchhikers and reproducers) and was feeding 4 times a day and phos dropped. In the 55 I was feeding lightly 2x a day and they eat everything within 30 seconds. I was doing daily 15% changes. I have knocked that down to 10-15% 2x a week. Still phos is there. Only thing I can think of is that one day the phos was off the chart (according to LFS, I was >10ppm on one day) that that did it. Also could have been driftwood, but if it was, it's all leeched out, 'cause that's been sitting in a bucket for almost 2 weeks and I just tested it, 0.5ppm or less so that wasn't it. Water looked like coffee though so still lots of tannins.

 

[Purrbox]

With only 5ppm of Phosphate in the aquarium, you needn't worry about it. It's beneficial to the plants and will help keep GSA away.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

I think you may be mistaken. 5ppm is the highest reading on my test kit by Hagen. the API test kit goes to 10 ppm and my LFS said they read that off the scale on one particular day. (I guess it was literally black)

Phosphates that high will cause huge algae problems and I've got algae that I'm assuming is GSA that won't go away in my tank because of it. Every LFS around here (the non-box) has told me high phosphates will cause this problem.

But back to my original question, what effect will using bio-chem zorb / phos-zorb (temporarily to get phos down to 0.5ppm or lower) have on my plants!!??

I would LIKE to use some kind of chemical filtration, I am looking for someone out there that uses bio-chem zorb on their planted tank! The info-video I found for it says it's perfect for use in planted tanks, but I want to hear it from the user not the promotional video.