fresh out of the lab...

just tested my water after a week of using Nopox.

a few things to be said:

first and for most all water changes and any water added to the tank via auto-topoff is RO/DI

1) the first tested values were prior to the use of nopox and (as shown by the date 1/26/13) just before my usual 200l. monthly water change

2)on the 2/3/13 a 60 liter water change was done, usually i would have done a 20 but i had some extra salt to kill

3) the nopox bottle i got (for free) expired in 2013, there is no month date but im sure its still usable though perhaps not as potent.

4) i dose 10ml of nopox daily and run a phosphate reactor with it. this reactor will be used for carbon in a near future.

please discuss results!!! my kh seems a drop high? together with my calcium? N03 and in part N02 are my nemeses. also i seem to have a crazy amount of Si02 (silicates not shown in these test results) that i do not understand where the hell they are coming from. im going to test the water in my auto top off bucket that is filled exclusively with RO/DI water and see if perhaps its not being filtered by the unit....thats the only explanation i can give myself.

also NH4 is tested only if a death (knock on wood) is sighted

 

-.- so my readings of silicate in my top off bucket are 0,8. re-assure me, an effective RO unit does remove silicate together with TDS right? would slowing the flow through the membranes help?

 

I'm not sure about the silicates but I would think an RO unit should take it out. It seems by your results that you've effectively reduced the nitrates quite a bit with the Nopox.....kh and calcium are a bit high but I don't think they are way out of line....other than the silicates are you having any algae issues? Do you dose anything?

 

im having a minor diatoms bloom issue at the moment. last Si02 values checked in the tank was 4 days ago and i had a reading of 1.2 in the DT.

and no i dont dose anything

 

what are you using to test for silicates?

 

Jbl but this is an old thread things are much much better, the values I closely monitor now are no3(around 10ppm) po4 (around 0,05) calcium and mag which I'm trying to keep round 450 and 1300.

I'm starting to have a couple issues with kh, seems to fluctuate a lot between values of 7 and 10. ( I recently changed salt brands so I'm thinking it might be due to this together with the addition of several sps colonies, 6 to be exact)

Otherwise I have a stable ph of 8.2-3

 

Some forms of silicates are tough for a RO membrane, it takes good DI resin with good contact time to finally polish them off.

http://www.gewater.com/pdf/Technical Papers_Cust/Americas/English/TP1058EN.pdf

Ion Removal

 

So it would seem, after I got my new ro/di unit my diatoms vanished in a matter of weeks. Have a nice clean white sand bed again.....winning!