Neptune Aquatics

Carbon absorbs Lanthanum?

J

Jonathan Chia

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I’m running GFO on my tankam and swap it out almost every 1.5 weeks but my phos still reads .15 on my Hanna

I’m considering dosing lanthanum but since I have no skimmer in my AIO, I have no real way of getting the lanthanum out

I do run chemipure blue, wondering if that would bind up the lanthanum?
 
This is bit tricky chemichal. Why using it? If you need better po4 absorber I highly recommend rowphose. Mich more effective than typical GFO.
That being said, not sure 1.5 week is long enough to see results especially using regular GFO.
With rowphse action is faster for sure, but still need to be done carefully so you do not tank your po4..
 
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Jonathan Chia said:
Yea I have some rowaphos on order cause I saw your recommendation on the other thread.

I dose phosrx whenever I see levels creep up past 0.1
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If you change your husbandry and use an effective gfo like rowphse, test frequently and be mindful of overfeeding, you can take control of your po4 better than using chemicals in my opinion.
Honestly any gfo should give you good control over po4 ad long ad you balance what you put in the tank with what you take out. If your import is too quick, you need quick export and visa versa..
I will caution you like I did with others.
Rowphse is super effective and fast, it's very important you yest po4 whole using it especially the first couple months you using it until you get used to its po4 removal speed in your tank.
 
I could be wrong, but I thought the issue with lanthanum was the fine precipitate that comes out of it binding phosphate, not the lanthanum itself. I believe people generally dose it into a very fine filter sock.
 
If you are dealing with rocks that is saturated with po4 it will keep leaching till it's done.
So it's possible water change will not help unless done on regular basis.
 
But I have used phosrx many times but only when po4 is well above .25 and I need it down now. I run carbon and have never seen the product not work because of it. I dose directly into my skimmer and if I follow the directions it drops the p04 to what it should.
 
Jonathan Chia said:
I’m running GFO on my tankam and swap it out almost every 1.5 weeks but my phos still reads .15 on my Hanna

I’m considering dosing lanthanum but since I have no skimmer in my AIO, I have no real way of getting the lanthanum out

I do run chemipure blue, wondering if that would bind up the lanthanum?
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Maybe I misunderstood the original question. Are you asking if chemipure/carbon will remove the precipitate byproduct? Or are you asking if it would render the dosage inefficient?
 
Jonathan Chia said:
Yea I don’t have a fine enough filter sock and I don’t think they make one for the nuvo. I dose it onto my filter pad but I doubt it does much
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Is your tank absolutely packed with rock and corals? Why not just make it ugly for the day and put the filter sock in the display while you dose it.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Is your tank absolutely packed with rock and corals? Why not just make it ugly for the day and put the filter sock in the display while you dose it.
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Never thought about that...I definitely have the room to do so.

My original question was whether or not carbon would strip out the excess lanthanum in the water..The reason I ask is I did an ICP after I did my first dose of phosRx and I had a small amount of it show up in the test. Wasn't enough to raise any concern, but I wonder if it will harm things in the long run if I don't skim it out (and was hoping to use carbon as a way of pulling it out of the water).

I'm not sure if its the particulate that's harmful or the lanthanum in the water that I need to worry about
 
Jonathan Chia said:
Never thought about that...I definitely have the room to do so.

My original question was whether or not carbon would strip out the excess lanthanum in the water..The reason I ask is I did an ICP after I did my first dose of phosRx and I had a small amount of it show up in the test. Wasn't enough to raise any concern, but I wonder if it will harm things in the long run if I don't skim it out (and was hoping to use carbon as a way of pulling it out of the water).

I'm not sure if its the particulate that's harmful or the lanthanum in the water that I need to worry about
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Lanthanum precipitate as LaPO4 is not neccessarily harmful, but you'd prefer to be able to export it out of your tank if you can. The easiest way to do this is by physical means such as filtration through a sock or a reactor with a filter on it (which is how I did this many years ago. My PO4 was >6 IIRC and my rocks were a huge sink). Activated carbon will most likely not adsorb it. However, Free Lanthanum as LaCl3 might be adsorbed as La+. Off hand, I know that activated carbon can adsorb heavy metals depending on how the carbon was activated. And, Lanthanum is on the bubble in terms of being a heavy metal.

Bottom line is to drip/dose really, really slow and measure regularly. But, having said all that, IMO, your phosphates aren't high enough to go to all the trouble of using lanthanum.
 
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