High Tide Aquatics

Lanthanum Chloride

chicken

chicken

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I have given up on the amount of GFO I needed to use for my FOWLR System. Its been at 3ppm of Po4 for a long long time now. GFO and Water Changes just don't make a dent and cost way to much money when you are dealing with this many gallons of water. After a bunch of research I decided to give Lanthanum Chloride a try. I picked up a quart of SeaKlear Aquaria Phosphate Remover. This stuff is potent. 11ml will remove 1ppm of Po4 from 700+ gallons of water. I have been slowly dosing over the last few weeks into my skimmer with a 5 micron sock on the output of it. I am now down to 0.3 PPM!!!! Wow never thought I would see that low in this system. I am diluting of Lanthanum Chloride with about 2 gallons of DI water and then dripping it over a 12-18 hour period. One dose pretty much plugs up the filter sock so it works well. I have not seen any real cloudiness in the tank or any adverse reactions, unless you call a big jump in coraline growth a bad thing.

If anyone is interested in some let me know. The 1 quart bottle should last me a long time. If you want some PM me and bring over a gallon jug and we can fill it up with DI water and put 10ml or so in and you should be good for a while. I just cannot believe how much the Brightwell Aquatics Phosphat-E is going for. Like $25 for 500ml and its diluted beyond all possible belief. The stuff I bought works out to $0.07 per ml and that treats 66g at 1ppm. So if I mixed up 30ml of the SeaKlear in 500ml of water it would cost be about $2 vs $25 of the Brightwell which is the same exact product. Gotta love the markups in this hobby :(
 
orientalexpress said:
It's reefsafe?if it is I like to order some?thanks



Lapsan
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The academy used it in their big tank, I've used it in mixed reefs, but nothing with any sensitive creatures (shrooms, GSP, Zoas, etc.)
 
tuberider said:
orientalexpress said:
It's reefsafe?if it is I like to order some?thanks



Lapsan
Click to expand...

The academy used it in their big tank, I've used it in mixed reefs, but nothing with any sensitive creatures (shrooms, GSP, Zoas, etc.)
Click to expand...

But don't they also take precautionary measures with its implementation? Atlantis Marine World uses it as well.
 
From what I have read the large aquariums dose it slowly in front of their freshly flushed sand filters so the precipitate does not get into the display tanks. What I have done, with so side effect so far, is dilute 11ml of it in about 2 gallons of DI water and drip it slowly into my skimmer over about 12-18 hours. The skimmer output I am running into a 5 micron filter sock to pickup all the precipitate. The filter sock seems to be picking everything up as it is plugging up in about the 12-18 hours while I drip the Lanthanum in.
 
chicken said:
From what I have read the large aquariums dose it slowly in front of their freshly flushed sand filters so the precipitate does not get into the display tanks. What I have done, with so side effect so far, is dilute 11ml of it in about 2 gallons of DI water and drip it slowly into my skimmer over about 12-18 hours. The skimmer output I am running into a 5 micron filter sock to pickup all the precipitate. The filter sock seems to be picking everything up as it is plugging up in about the 12-18 hours while I drip the Lanthanum in.
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That is similar to what we do at work. Matt even made a doser that was a 5 gal bucket that drained into a 5 micron sock. I always thought a seaclone skimmer flowing into a 5 micron sock would work really well, but never got around to making it.
In the big tank we saw some issues following dosing - it looked like clams didn't like it and the echinopora as well, but we're not sure. We haven't dosed it in that tank in a while. We dosed a few smaller tanks, saw some bad reactions by sponges. I stopped using it because I always seemed to get a bounce back of PO4. It would go down, then pop back up. We do dose it regularly in some of the cold water tanks.

Interesting PO4 thing. I had the lab at work check my tank water so I could compare conditions and growth with tanks at work. Apparently my PO4 at home is .24 which is high, but I have a ton of growth. So, maybe PO4 being blamed for problems was better blamed on something else, or maybe the test was off or maybe my PO4 is spiking. Weirder, my alk was 1.47 meq which is low. Maybe its just getting used up as fast as its added.
 
I have had some bounce back also but I suspect that is phosphate leaching off the rock since my Po4 has been high for many years. After one of my doses the other day I got it down to 0.36 but then the next morning it was at 0.74. I have had the same bounce back problems on this tank with GFO though to. So I do not think it is related to Lanthanum. Anyone know how much Po4 can be bound up by Live Rock? I figured this was going to be a few month process to get the Po4 down to a reasonable level.

My understanding of Lanthanum dosing is its pretty much an immediate reaction. If I put a few drops in my sump I can see it start to precipitate within a few seconds and that goes on for about 3-4 seconds then stops. The other thing to really watch for is drops in Alk as it gets sucked up by the precipitate. I have been slowly buffing up my tank from like 8dkh to 10dkh before I dose the Lanthanum.
 
I avoid its use in reef systems whenever possible. I regret trying it in a reef tank at work. This is probably the only philosophical disagreement I have with Joe Yaiullo. :D My belief (admittedly without any scientific evidence) is that it is a minor stress on certain species of corals, which can be a major problem for an already weakened coral. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that it can be a major stress on certain fish species, Tridacna clams, sponges, and who knows what else. There are just so many unknowns about why these organisms react negatively to lanthanum dosing that I don't feel comfortable recommending its use when other methods (GFO with regeneration, refugiums) are only slightly more expensive on hobbyist sized tanks.

Here is what Craig Bingman has to say about it, and I agree:
I've always thought it was a bad idea, and I will always think it is a bad idea. I've no doubt that it achieves the proximal goal of reducing inorganic phosphate concentrations in the system. Beyond that, it is another quantitation disaster with a potentially toxic substance. The only way the aquarist has to assess its concentration is by the diminution it has on phosphate concentrations. When they start to plateau low, then you really don't know how much lanthanum ions are still around. I could make a swing at Ksp values, but because of the +3 charge on the ion, any rough analysis would just be wrong, because the activity will be strongly affected by salt concentration in general, and by some specific ion pairing effects.

As far as aquatic toxicity goes:

http://www.pesticideinfo.org/List_Aq...?Rec_Id=AQ5709

There are very limited if any studies of its toxicity on marine organisms. I would imagine that the relatively high concentrations of calcium in seawater provides some protective effect. Nevertheless, as you can see, some things die when exposed to lanthanum ions in relatively low concentrations.

There are zero positive biological roles for lanthanum ions. It is a general calcium mimic in biology, and I've never read anything good about it in that capacity. You really don't want to screw around with calcium mediated signaling in non-calcifying organisms. Who knows what it does to major calcifiers?

I'm glad it works for you. It will never have a place in any system that I manage. I'm not running a public aquarium, though, and I don't need to impress the paying customer with a wall of fish and deal with all the downstream implications of that.

If people do use it, they should pay close attention to what Joe Y. wrote. There is a limit to how low you can push the phosphate numbers with it, and at the lower end of that limit, you build up progressively more (toxic) La+3 ions in solution. Remember, you don't have a La+3 test kit, you just have "lack of phosphate" as a proxy for that concentration.
Click to expand...
 
GreshamH said:
tuberider said:
orientalexpress said:
It's reefsafe?if it is I like to order some?thanks



Lapsan
Click to expand...

The academy used it in their big tank, I've used it in mixed reefs, but nothing with any sensitive creatures (shrooms, GSP, Zoas, etc.)
Click to expand...

But don't they also take precautionary measures with its implementation? Atlantis Marine World uses it as well.
Click to expand...


Correct, and I should have mentioned that, in my case I've used it in a slow diluted drip into a filter sock similar to the chicken method.
 
Chris,

Lanthanum Chloride is a very effective way of removing Po4 in large systems. It is potent stuff as you mentioned. I remember listening to Joe Yaiullo on Reef Addicts. He mentioned using 300ml of the lanthanum chloride and diluting it in 5 gallons of RO. He drips it over a 8 day period and back washed it in the intake of the sand filters. The key is diluting this powerful chemical, some side affects are lanthanum chloride leaching back into your tank as lanthanum carbonate (which can only be removed by buffing it out in acrylic aqauriums) and caking on tangs (especially zebrasomas).

Here's a link to that interview:

http://www.reefaddicts.com/content.php/166-Reef-Addicts-Podcast-Episode-5
 
Matt_Wandell said:
If people do use it, they should pay close attention to what Joe Y. wrote. There is a limit to how low you can push the phosphate numbers with it, and at the lower end of that limit, you build up progressively more (toxic) La+3 ions in solution. Remember, you don't have a La+3 test kit, you just have "lack of phosphate" as a proxy for that concentration.
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Matt thanks for the info. The one part of my plan I did not mention was once I got down to
 
Lanthanum chloride (LaCl3) is a chemical compound. It is used as a mild Lewis acid to perform chemical reactions that usually require acidic conditions, such as converting aldehydes to acetals, under nearly neutral conditions. Wholesale Chemicals
 
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