Following a rapid rise in Phosphate from 0.5 mg/l to 4.0 + mg/l, I decided to go ahead and change 70% of the water.
According to a friend of mine, a fertilizer called Planttabbs I used yesterday may very well be the cause of the super fast increase in Phosphate.
"Those plant tabs have lots of Phosphate and might be appropriate as
plant tabs for water lilies to get them to bloom. This particular plant
tab may be inappropriate for general planted aquaria, in my opinion."
Monitored PH during the water change process and added a product called EasyBalance with Nitraban! The Ph remained pretty stable around 6.5 once I added the EasyBalance product. I continued to add RO water and only 3 cups of straight well water in order to have some buffering in there. Note that EasyBalance does claim to raise KH and thus also buffers the water.
Since I removed the larger part of water, I felt it necessary to mix in the usual water liquid fertilizers: Trace, Iron and Organic carbon. As I poured this mixture in, the PH dropped to 6.3 but bounced back to 6.5 and has remained there. The Pinpoint PH monitor currently reads 6.54.
I finished the routine by changing the DIY bottles as they both seemed exhausted. The CO2 reactor chamber was no longer showing a gas vortex. Well, this proved a mistake. Within 30 minutes, the reactor was unable to cope with the excessive surge in carbon dioxide gas and started spraying microscopic bubbles. So I know now that one bottle change at a time is enough!
Phosphate is at 2.0 mg/l now, which is still high. Hesitantly, I think I might go ahead and put a bit of Seachem's PhosGuard in the filter pad. I will do another water change tomorrow.
Comments