Reef nutrition

Lanthanum Chloride Success (so far)

H2OPlayar

H2OPlayar

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I recently tested my phosphate and got .47 on the Hanna reader, which seems a little high even for me so I got out the bottle of lanthanum chloride and put a few drops into the skimmer neck over the course of 3 days and got it down to .06. No ill effects so far and the skimmer seemed to do the job of mixing and pulling the lanthanum crystals out. I will keep an eye on things (from afar) and see if anything weird happens. This was way cheaper than gfo, and much easier than refilling the reactor. I might need to try this again in a few months when the phosphate gets back up there. I haven't run the 5-10 micron filter sock due to hoping the skimmer would pull it all out.

Anyone else (besides Mr Ross dripping it into his skimmer all the time) use lanthanum chloride in their tanks?
 
Do you have any tangs? I’ve wanted to try this stuff before, but I see a quite a few anecdotal reports of people losing tangs after putting this stuff in their tanks.
 
H2OPlayar said:
I recently tested my phosphate and got .47 on the Hanna reader, which seems a little high even for me so I got out the bottle of lanthanum chloride and put a few drops into the skimmer neck over the course of 3 days and got it down to .06. No ill effects so far and the skimmer seemed to do the job of mixing and pulling the lanthanum crystals out. I will keep an eye on things (from afar) and see if anything weird happens. This was way cheaper than gfo, and much easier than refilling the reactor. I might need to try this again in a few months when the phosphate gets back up there. I haven't run the 5-10 micron filter sock due to hoping the skimmer would pull it all out.

Anyone else (besides Mr Ross dripping it into his skimmer all the time) use lanthanum chloride in their tanks?
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I used it with good success last year.

Running high bioload in my tank, phosphates crept up on me (to the tune of 1.0+ ppm). I used lanthanum chloride over the course of a couple days, always adding it very slowly, and I got my phosphates down to a range where I could use GFO to maintain it (instead of it exhausting virtually instantly). I believe I also had a squaretail tang in the tank at that point, which didn't seem to suffer any ill effects.
 
I've been really interested in trying it. Seems like the type of thing that'll become a fad soon (for good reason). Some company should create a phosphate tester + lanthanum doser device. A "smart filter sock".
 
H2OPlayar said:
I recently tested my phosphate and got .47 on the Hanna reader, which seems a little high even for me so I got out the bottle of lanthanum chloride and put a few drops into the skimmer neck over the course of 3 days and got it down to .06. No ill effects so far and the skimmer seemed to do the job of mixing and pulling the lanthanum crystals out. I will keep an eye on things (from afar) and see if anything weird happens. This was way cheaper than gfo, and much easier than refilling the reactor. I might need to try this again in a few months when the phosphate gets back up there. I haven't run the 5-10 micron filter sock due to hoping the skimmer would pull it all out.

Anyone else (besides Mr Ross dripping it into his skimmer all the time) use lanthanum chloride in their tanks?
Click to expand...
That seems like a very fast reduction if I’m reading it right?
 
Coral reefer said:
That seems like a very fast reduction if I’m reading it right?
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It can virtually instantly drop phosphates. I was careful with dosing and managed to drop phosphate readings by ~0.5 in the span of thirty minutes or so (I made the assumption it was beyond saturating effects at that concentration, so the initial drop was pretty high).
 
H2OPlayar said:
I recently tested my phosphate and got .47 on the Hanna reader, which seems a little high even for me so I got out the bottle of lanthanum chloride and put a few drops into the skimmer neck over the course of 3 days and got it down to .06. No ill effects so far and the skimmer seemed to do the job of mixing and pulling the lanthanum crystals out. I will keep an eye on things (from afar) and see if anything weird happens. This was way cheaper than gfo, and much easier than refilling the reactor. I might need to try this again in a few months when the phosphate gets back up there. I haven't run the 5-10 micron filter sock due to hoping the skimmer would pull it all out.

Anyone else (besides Mr Ross dripping it into his skimmer all the time) use lanthanum chloride in their tanks?
Click to expand...
Coral reefer said:
That seems like a very fast reduction if I’m reading it right?
Click to expand...
Agree with Mike that I don’t think I would have reduced PO4 levels as fast as Michael did, but I’m glad to have the data point that he didn’t see any problems with it.
 
I’ve been using Phosphate RX for the past 2 years. I have 7+ tangs in my tank and none have ever died from using it. I don’t even use a filter sock, I squeeze 6 drops per 10g into the skimmer chamber. The water gets cloudy for a few hours but eventually clears up. I dose at night anyways so by morning it’s all clear again. Melevsreef has been using it for 6+years with great success.

 
Chicken :p J/K
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I do have tangs, it's only been a few days but fingers crossed. The bottle said not to reduce more than 1 ppm per day and I was doing about .15 per day. Gave everyone a good feeding when I left and we will see what happens. The big point I've heard is don't go to zero, and .06 is double what old school said to hit at max, but we are seeing why it's old school.
 
I’ve been using for getting close to a year. Many gangs of I think each genus. I have it on a doser and run from 2 to 10ml into skimmer per day. My fuge easily stripped nitrate but leaves a ton of phosphate
 
This is a bit of a resurrection but figured it's better than starting a new thread. @H2OPlayar did you continue dosing lanthanum? Or did you let po4 rise again because you saw no benefit with lower phos?

My po4 is around .4-.5, which is fine for me other than it tends to rise pretty quickly without GFO which is such a PITA. I'm thinking of dosing lanthanum very slowly into the skimmer with a Versa pump and am curious if it clung to the walls of your skimmer or required any extra cleaning? My Reef Octo skimmer also has an ozone inlet on the volute which would be super convenient but might gum up the skimmer pump...

@IOnceWasLegend where did you add yours?

I know folks have had success just adding it to the tank but I'd prefer to dose into the roller mat or skimmer just to be as cautious as possible!
 
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