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Tina
Hello to all sailors! My experiments might be useful to someone. Recently, I faced a problem with high phosphate levels and didn't want to spend money on anti-phosphate since it's not cheap, especially for a 650-liter system where you need a lot and often, as practice showed. This pushed me to look for alternative methods. I accidentally came across forums mentioning that lanthanum chloride reduces phosphate. After half a day of searching for this reagent, which is not sold in stores and is quite expensive, I found it. After obtaining the reagent and calculating the dosage using a calculator from one of the forums, I added it to the system. It should not be added directly, only in a reactor, which I used a skimmer for. Initially, the phosphate level was 0.5. The calculation was for 7 days at 4.6 ml per day. After 5 days, it was 0, which is exactly what I aimed for. I was overjoyed. The system is stable, and the inhabitants are doing well; the skimmer collected a lot of dark sludge. Now for the most interesting part: 50 grams of lanthanum cost me 87, from which I prepared a solution of 10.2 g per 1 liter of RO water. I used 32 ml of this solution. The savings are quite impressive. Any great additives that I initially used can be made at home and cost pennies. After 2 years of marine aquaristics, and I won't even mention freshwater, I've concluded that the sea doesn't have to be expensive. Good luck to everyone.