 | Aquaria Phosphate and colloidal solids control | NoPhos home | Aquatic Parks
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NoPhos acts both as a flocculent and as a phosphate precipitating agent. NoPhos, it is a very effective flocculent and as such it will bring micron and sub-micron particles in suspension together to make them much larger, thereby allowing the pressure AFM filters to remove very fine solids. NoPhos should be used with AFM® filter media in the sand filters because it works synergistically with NoPhos. In effect the NoPhos places a positive charge on the particles and AFM® removes the small particles by electrical attraction. In addition, if too much NoPhos is used, the AFM® will adsorb the excess NoPhos. NoPhos reacts with soluble reactive phosphate to form and insoluble precipitate, the reaction is stoichiometric ( see equation below) By carefully controlling the phosphate level you can control the growth of plants and algae. If an aquarium has a high turbidity caused by algae, then NoPhos can be used to reduce the phosphate food source and gradually over a period of a few weeks reduce the algae levels. Phosphate is also required by bacteria, so if a large dose of NoPhos is used then bacteria will be prevented from growing. In an aquarium system this is not desired because the biological filter would fail and the corals would suffer. | | | |
| NoPhos + PO4-3 = NoPhos PO4 (s) 1kg of NoPhos will remove approximately 100g of Phosphate as PO4 - P or 300g of phosphate as PO4 | | How to use NoPhos in an Aquarium system | | Example. NoPhos must always be dosed into the water at a slow rate using a dosing pump, (peristaltic pump) and injected into the circuit before AFM®, pressure sand filter. NoPhos may be used with sand filtets, but sand filters beds usually suffer from worm-hole channelling Example, an Aquarium with a water volume of 2000 cubic metres of water Phosphate as PO4 - P is 0.5 mg/l target level is 0.1mg/l phosphate removal required = 0.4mg/l, you should never completely eliminate phosphate, always leave at least 0.1mg/l. of soluble reactive phosphate ( ortho-phosphate) Total weight of Phosphate = 0.4 * 1000 * 2000 = 800,000 mg = 800g Total weight of NoPhos required = 800 x 10 = 8000g = 8Kg 8 Kg of NoPhos is dissolved into water and dosed using a dosing pump at a constant rate into the system before media bed filters such as sand or AFM® units. It is important that the filters do not have channelling through the beds, so inspect the filters beds before proceeding. If the filters have channelling do not use NoPhos as the precipitate will pass straight into the aquarium. To check the filter beds, take a handful of the filter bed media, if the media flows through your fingers it is okay to continue. However if the media sits as a gelatinous lump, the media should be cleaned (chemically purged) or replaced with AFM prior to using NoPhos. Do not add the NoPhos as a single dose, it is very important to use a slow dosing pump and take at least 2 months or longer to slowly bring the phosphate levels down. NoPhos reacts synergistically with AFM® , so the combination is always better than NoPhos and sand. Stop dosing with NoPhos when the phosphate as P is reduce to 0.1mg/l, resume dosing when level increase to 0.2 mg/l, and in this example, the maintenance dose is 200 g of NoPhos over a period of 1 to 4 weeks and then check the phosphate levels.
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