After using the Hana Phosphate checker I discovered that my phosphates were a lot higher than I thought they were. Using other (conventional) test kits I have a hard time distinguishing the low level colour gradients near zero. With the Hana I get an exact digital reading, cool! After a few rounds (quite a bit of trial and error) with the Hana meter I think I have the process down. One thing I learned is that there are quite a few things that can throw the meter off. Finger prints, bubbles in the cuvette, not using all the reagent (some of it ends up on the counter or stuck in the corners of its packet.. grrr!). Anyway, after seeing that my phosphate was non-zero and was actually 0.16 I started to scratch my head and wonder exactly where the phosphates were coming from. Yes, I know we introduce phosphates through various foods that we throw into our tanks but what I was really curious about was who was the greatest offender. So today I set out to answer this question and here's how it went down.
For every food product that I feed my fish I scooped up
1 teaspoons worth and dumped it into a bowl of 1/4 cup of RO/DI water.
I then let the food sit all day to leech out all its phosphorus goodness.
Top Left: Nori sheet (from Superstore)
Top Middle: Formula 1 Flakes
Top Right: Formula 1 pellets
Bottom Left:
My homemade fish mush
Bottom Right: PE Misys (unrinsed)
After a few hours ( like 10 or 11 i think ) I began the testing. For each food item I purcolated the mixture to get as much fluid as possible.
I tried to test this solution but it was way too concentrated so I had to dilute it. Instead, I drew up
2 mils of each fluid and diluted it with 8mils of RO/DI water.
I now had my solutions that I could test and simply followed the
Hana testing procedures with the control sample and reagent sample.
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The results were not overly surprising. We all know these foods contain phosphates that are typically used as a preservative. As I said earlier, I was mostly curious about which food items had the most phosphate. To add to my disclaimer, this is NOT a scientific experiment by any stretch of the imagination. I tried my best to keep consistent with each test but there is still a huge potential for error. This really just gives me a rough ballpark idea rather than concrete evidence of anything. Having said all that, here are my results!
NB: All results in PPM (Parts Per Million). I performed 3 tests for each sample and took an average. The meter has a resolution of 0 to 2.5. Anything higher than 2.5 and it just flashes 2.5.
1.
My homemade fish mush - 1.81
2. PE Misys (unrinsed) - 1.90
3. Nori (sheets from Superstore) - 2.04
4. Formula 1 flakes - > 2.5 !!
5. Formula 1 pellets - 2.3
6. Tap Water - 0.00
7. RO/DI Water - 0.00
8. Rinsed PE Misys - TBD
9. New Salt Water (Instant Ocean) - TBD
So there we have it. Again, I can not emphasize enough, take these results with a grain of sea salt! They are not scientific. You will notice a couple of TBD up there. I plan to do a water change tomorrow so I'll be testing that mixture and post the results then. I have also rinsed the sample of PE Misys to see what difference that makes. It should be ready for me to test tomorrow morning as it is currently leeching in its bowl.
I need to buy more reagents..
