Reverse osmosis-algae, which one does what with phosphates?

Reverse osmosis firstly, these normally have a sediment filter cartridge to take out the big bits, then hopefully a coconut carbon filter to take out chemicals then the RO bladder that is sort of a plastic bag with water forced through its pores.

If you do not have the cartridges especially carbon before the bladder the chems in our water eat away at the bladder.

They should last at least 5 years, maybe one year with no carbon filter.

The pores in the RO bladder are so tiny that everything but liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen are nearly the only things to get through giving you normally around 99 percent pure water.

The bladder is why the wastewater is so high at normally 50 percent filtered to near pure water and 50 percent wastewater, which is full of what will not go through the bladders membrane.

My old water filter that I bought in the 90s and stoped using in 2001,I put a new high quality RO bladder in and new cartridges in just over two months back because of a couple of mistakes I made, so it would pick up my water quality.

I used only tap water as top up water as an experiment for 18 months and no water changes for 13 months to see how well the algae could extract all impurities; it worked nicely for that time at protecting my corals and especially the reduction of invasive bacteria and algae forms.

If you do not have substantial algae to extract-import impurities you are better off using your RO filtered water to reduce inorganic phosphates.

If there is any phosphorus-phosphates showing in a test, then don’t bother with delicate symbiotic with algae life forms.

The high functioning algae that corals-anemones up take for their algae clades that will sustain them cannot exist easily when phosphorus and other nutrients are present.

Skimmers can’t take out phosphorus unless it is associated with dead tissue, so phosphorus remains as sediment if low currents are part of your set up.

You can throw away your water (water change) very regularly to reduce some phosphorus that is picked up in the display tanks current.

Phosphorus is called phosphate for the hobby,(it isn’t phosphate),but phosphorus is in every living cell bound with orthophosphate, so anything you use as food in any way or tap water, has phosphorus with in it and if your skimmer doesn’t get it out before the bio life forms eat away the dead tissue leaving only nitrogen and phosphorus, then the only way to get rid of it is throw away some water, or for me I use algae to soak it up using it for it’s own calcium carbonate up take and cell construction.