What is everyone's go to Phosphate remover/absorbers and where do you place it within your tank/filter?
I am having troubles with high phosphate (and due to this bba I suspect )* and before I go out and purchase phosphate removers I am asking for everyone's favorite way to remove phosphates. I have a lightly planted tank (any plant suggestions would be wonderful) and it seems none of the plants are to demanding for phosphate (or as im thinking I just have excess not being used). I have already tried changing my lighting cycle and adding CO2 and water movement (which took care of the staghorn) so now I am on to lowering my phosphates.
*no other algae grows besides BBA now and plants are growing fine.
Any suggestions would be helpful. I have started to user easy green once a week (thinking I was lacking other nutrients to help the plants absorb the phosphates) and have started feeding more frozen foods in hopes that this will help decrease phosphates.
I have a HOB so I can add the phosphate remover/absorber in it ,but if anyone has an idea how to add it to a sponge filter that would be wonderful aswell. Currently all that is in my filter is a sponge and ceramic pellets.
Live Plants:
Moneywort, Red Flame Sword(one mature plant and two mini's that grew from it), Crypticoryne wendetti, Pink Flamingo Crypts, amazon sword, recently added java fern from one of my other tanks and a tiny (5 leaf) pothos plant hanging out the top thats slowly growing new roots. I have a fluval 3.0 on 45 gallon tank with normal gravel as the substrate.
Ammonia: 0
Nitrites:0
Nitrates: 50 (doesnt fluctuate much when easy green added)
PH: 7.2
GH:very hard looks to be 300 on the test strips even though out of my tap its less than the 150 range
kh: 40~
Chlorine: 0
Thank you,