Just got a Phospate test kit

[REEFVETTE]

I test my phostphates and its came up between .5 and 1.0 i did water change yesterday and added a small micron bag of phostpate spong by kent marine. It says leave in for 8 hours.... Is this why my corals have been perishing and i have cyno and hair?

[REEFVETTE]

Ph 8.4
Ammonia 5.0
Nitrite 10
Nitrate .5

[REEFVETTE]

I just removed the Torch coral.... My carpet anemone is hanging in there but hes not looking too good either... All fish are fine eating and colorful

[REEFVETTE]

Im doing a 2.5 gallon water change tooo. Will anyone give me advice

[Ninong]

Ph 8.4
Ammonia 5.0
Nitrite 10
Nitrate .5

If your phosphate is between 0.5 and 1.0, it is much too high. It should be below 0.03 ppm, ideally less than 0.01 ppm.

However, that is the least of your problems. If you ammonia is truly 5.0 ppm and your nitrite is truly 10 ppm, then I am surprised that anything at all is alive in your tank. I wonder if your test results are accurate?

A nitrate reading of 0.5 ppm would be fantastic! However, it is extremely unlikely that you would have nitrate of only 0.5 ppm while your other test results were literally off the chart.

[Ninong]

You have two options:

(1) Perform an immediate 90% water change.

(2) Add a product that neutralizes ammonia, such as Prime. I hate to recommend this approach for a 20-gal tank because I'm not sure it's safe and I have no personal experience with it.

I know that option No. 1 is acceptable in your particular emergency but I would want to hear from someone else who has tried one of those ammonia neutralizing products first before trying it inside the aquarium, especially a small aquarium. ???

[REEFVETTE]

I took out the carpet didnt looks good and couldnt risk it dying. I did a 5 gallon water change yesterday and added fritz zyme. It said leave the skimmer off but i left it off all yeterday and added that stuff. I will do another water change when i get home from work too.... Thanks for the help