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Potting soil spilled in reef tank

IOnceWasLegend

IOnceWasLegend

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So my wife was doing some stuff with her plants, and accidentally spilled potting soil (Miracle Gro) into our 20 gallon reef tank. I'd estimate about 1/4 cup made it into the tank.

I've already done a water change on it, siphoned out everything I could see, and will be running carbon pretty heavily. Is this still a 'pull everything' situation, or just keep a close eye on it?
 
I think these types of fertilizer have decent amounts of ammonium nitrate and potassium phosphate in them. Would be interesting to see if this effected the phosphate and nitrate levels in the tank.
 
Corallus said:
I think these types of fertilizer have decent amounts of ammonium nitrate and potassium phosphate in them. Would be interesting to see if this effected the phosphate and nitrate levels in the tank.
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I'm definitely be monitoring those. This has been a "dirtier" tank (anemones and soft corals) so I'm not worried about that too much, but will probably run chemipure instead of straight carbon to minimize nutrient swings of it releases a bunch as it breaks down.
 
Agree it will likely increase your nutrients pretty rapidly. I would think it wouldn’t be worse than spilling the same volume of food in the tank nutrient-wise, if you are looking to get a rough feel of the level of risk.

As to what else could be in there and a problem, I don’t know but I suspect nothing terrible. Please update us!
 
Just did a search: the composition of Miracle-Gro is 15 percent nitrogen, 30 percent phosphate, 15 percent soluble potash (potassium), 0.15 percent iron, 0.06 percent zinc, 0.05 percent manganese, 0.02 percent boron and 0.00005 percent molybdenum.

Likey the potting soil is less concentrated so you'll likely just see an algae bloom. Everything else is pretty much already in the water as a minor or trace element. Maybe run some GFO to grab the phosphate.
 
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