Phyto-feast & phosphates?

[artarmon42]

Yesterday I was doing a full maintenance of my tank, including taking various tests.
Everything was within normal parameters, except that my phosphates were a little high 0.5ppm (using the Salifert test kit). I connected up my canister filter (with Rowaphos) and let it run ~4 hours. I tested again and it was less than 0.03ppm.

This morning, I put in 7 drops of Phyto-feast (in my 12G Nano Cube, I normally put in 1-2 drops per day, but I had not put any in for the past week). About an hour later, I thought I'd test for phosphates again (mostly because I wanted to make sure my test result of 0.03ppm yesterday was accurate). To my amazement, it was reading 0.5ppm again.

I broke out the canister filter and ran it for ~4 hours again. This time the test results came back between 0 - 0.03ppm (much closer to 0 this time).

Can anyone figure out what's going on?
Does Phyto-feast really introduce that much phosphates? If so, I better stop using it!
If not, what could swing the phosphate readings around that much?

[Rod Buehler]

does the phytofeast smell rotten like its dead, or sweet like carmel, or like algae/plant matter?

[PrivateJoker64]

That stuff is like raw sewage. Dump it out.

[artarmon42]

I had not sniffed it in awhile but now that I do, it doesn't smell like anything. Not sweet like it used to when I got it. Will definitely toss this bottle!

I measured phosphates this morning and it's a little bit over 0.03. I guess I need to do a whole tank maintenance again (e.g. remove my Polyfilter) to get the remaining stuff out of my tank.

[seafarm]

Hi Artarmon42,

When did you purchase your bottle of PF? If it is old the cells could be breaking and leaking into the water column. Phosphate is a key nutrient in all plants so they all have high levels of phospahte. However if the cells are intact you should not get any increased reading in the water column.

Randy Reed, Reed Mariculture / Phyto-Feast