phosphate

[newbietofishes]

I do weekly WC my ammonia is 0 my nitrite is 0 and my nitrate is no more than 10 it not even 10mg/l it more like 5mg/l but decided to do phosphate test today and that is 2mg/l which isnt good what would cause that to be high when the other three test is good? ive got a 220L (uk) tank when various of plant and no idea what plant names there are fishes that are in there are swordtails, pleco, barbs, ruby shark, killi loach, otto too. Lighting im using is t8 power glo and life glo and i have it switch on for about 6 hours. Any help given will be gratefully recieved Thanks

 

[aqua_chem]

2 ppm is fine, especially with your lighting. Is it causing any issues? If not, I wouldn't mess with it.

 

[newbietofishes]

No major issues just notice that only one plant seem to have algee growing but all the other plant and glass are fine assuming that cos of the otto and pleco keeping it down just wanted to be sure there wasnt anything i could do to make it safer and reduce the risk of it getting worse...

 

[aqua_chem]

If only one plant has some algae, I wouldn't worry about it. You're more likely to cause problems changing things then fix it.

 

[Rivercats]

I run my phosphate levels between 5-10ppm without problems so as already stated, don't fix what isn't broken.

 

[MMantelli]

How would 2ppm/L translate to US wouldn't it end up being like 7.5ppm/G I'm not questioning anyone but that seems high for just t8 lights. I'm still learning though.

 

[aqua_chem]

mg/L is the same as ppm. Parts per million is 1 gram / 1000000 grams. Since there are 1000 mg in a gram and (about) 1000g in a liter of water, it balances out.

You can actually have higher levels of nutrients with less light because it's the light that gets most people into trouble. Excess nutrients don't really get people into trouble with algae until you start to get into pretty ridiculous levels.

 

[MMantelli]

mg/L is the same as ppm. Parts per million is 1 gram / 1000000 grams. Since there are 1000 mg in a gram and (about) 1000g in a liter of water, it balances out.

You can actually have higher levels of nutrients with less light because it's the light that gets most people into trouble. Excess nutrients don't really get people into trouble with algae until you start to get into pretty ridiculous levels.

Oooooooo I see thank you for the clarification.