adding pollution

[old ron]

This post is only meant to call everyones attention to a pollution problem that I am starkly aware of. The Piscine energetics mysis
shrimp are extremely high in Po4 even after rinsing in ro water the small amouny of liquid is off scale (salifert) The vibrance II from the O R farm is also off scale for Po4 less than a drop from the enriched shrimp is Po4 bigtime. Please do not take my word for this but do a test on your own and then decide if you want to pollute your tank with these high levels of Po4. by the way I caught a fresh string of feces and it tested very high also. I have stopped enriching my shrimp as of oct 28 I rinse the shrimp several times and I am aware that a lot of phosphate is still getting dumped into the tank. I am going to get in touch soon with PE and perhaps find out why the high phos.

[old ron]

Patsy, of Piscine Energetics replied to my querey about the high Po4 in the mysis product that she sells. She indicated that there is indeed Po4 in the mysis but that a test was done on 9/14/99
and it indicated that the shrimp contained Po4 at the rate of 4 micrograms/gram (or 113.40 micrograms per ounce)
She also indicated that no one has raised this question before and that there have been no complaints about the product. I agree that the product is great and has made a huge difference in the salt hobby and because of the PE product we now are able to keep seahorses, pipefish, etc. I will continue to use PE shrimp
myself but the high Po4 is of great concern, perhaps I will need to beef up my phosphate export from the tanks. I still do not intend to use the vibrance product from OR ( IMO it is a boog a boo to sell a product that is not needed) perhaps if I lived close to the tropic ocean where I could have access to a flow thru/ flush system to export contaminates I might use it (but probably not as I believe my horses are doing fine without it.

[old ron]

If anyone is interested in participating, I am wondering if a problem may exist in your horse tank ie: hair algae etc, and what are your test results for Po4. Perhaps also you might indicate your water exchanges in terms of how much and how often also what other means of nutrient exportation do you use. There is no intent to flame OR or PE as I am only concerned with my hobby
because I have a choice to use or not to use. but I think we should all know what is going on. know what is causing a problem is half the solution of solving it.
Thanx all!

[Mairi]

Hi Ron, we can't get PE mysis here in Australia but we do have Hikari. It is smaller than the PE shrimp and slightly lower in the fats. I feed it as the main diet of all my horses, with a 2wice weekly addition of other foods like brine shrimp, plankton or krill. I have not noticed any PO4 in any of the tanks & haev no hair algae at all. Maybe you could try this brand for a while & see if you get a marked difference in your levels?

BTW I don't use any enrichment, I don't believe it is required, unless I am feeding live.

HTH

[Mad Scientist]

hmmmmm, interesting post.


Lets not forget though that phosphorous is critical to nutrition, and a food 100% free of phosphate would not be very healthy to feed. In fact, won't wild mysis (or anthing that has muscle cells) test postive for phosphate?


I use tons of vibrance in my reef tank (I like it better than slecon or zoe) and I have no algae problems at all. My horse tank, while it doesn't test postive for phosphate (unless you have a serious problem your water should always test zero since the alage will use up the phospate right awa), does have an slight algae problem. I think this due to low current more than anthing else (also my DSB is pretty young), I'm going to add some more grazers soon and maybe even increase the current a bit (I have just my bak-pak on 30hex) and it doesn't even really break the surface tesnsion. I also have lots of macro, that drinks up any phosphate as well.