phosphate and plant growth

[omegasupreme]

It's been 2 months and it seems my tank is fully established. Yet my phosphates continue to be high at 10ppm. Could someone fill me in on how this affects the plant life since the growth is less than i had expected. I have pressurized Co2 with 3bpm and 2.88wpg. My results are as follows:

Gh: 71.6ppm
KH: 89.5ppm
Ph: 7.0
Nitrate 0ppm
Nitrite: .25ppm
Ammonia: 0ppm

I've also read that the testing kits for phosphate aren't the most accurate (I'm using Aqua. Pharm).

I dosed ferts using the EI guidelines for a heavily planted 75gal tank.


Also, I haven't dosed Fe as of yet. What methods do you guys use in order to dose this?


Thanks in advance!


Here is a picture.

 

[rich311k]

There probably is no need to dose FE. Your CO2 levels are only 15 ppm. You want to crank that up to be over 30ppm. Once you get the CO2 levels up you should see some nice growth.

 

[omegasupreme]

even if the bubble counter is far above the recommended levels? say a constant stream of bubbles?

 

[rich311k]

Going by your KH and PH levels your CO2 is only 15 ppm. How are you diffusing the CO2? Do you have any surface agitation?

Leave a cup of tank water out for 24 hours and test the KH and PH. That will tell us if you have any other buffers in the tank that may be throwing the CO2 readings off.

 

[omegasupreme]

I have a Red Sea 500 reactor. No surface agitation. I'll post up the KH and PH tomorrow. Thanks for your help Rich.

 

[Purrbox]

The fact that you've got 0.25ppm Nitrite in an established tank is not good. This inicates that there is either a problem with your biofilter or that there is a dead fish or too much dead plant matter in the tank.

In addition your Nitrates have bottomed out. Your plants need Nitrates to be able to grow, and this is probably why you aren't seeing much growth from them. You'll need to start increase you Nitrate dosing, to help you plants and prevent an algae outbreak.