Resiliency of system or quality of product?

[doctorwhoreefer]

I must admit, I made a mistake. I thought I heard from the LFS 1/2 a teaspoon for this food in general was ok, and then I found the instruction card and provided spoon in the jar under all the food. (I should have seen it on the outside stating "instructions are in jar with food" :| )

I fed 1/2 a teaspoon just about every day for 5-7 days before I found the spoon. Depending upon how many times the dosage I fed, it's easily 1-2000 gallons worth of food I used.

Anyways, as I realized this, I realize the below shot of the bp reactor was after 10 days from initial cleaning and addition of biodigest. (ecobak plus pellets, 1ml amp of biodigest added to tank mainly not reactor; I cleaned out the reactor to see how biodigest did, which was 1 day after obtaining and feeding nutricell)

Otherwise, I'm pretty stunned at the results. The phosphate levels of the tank stayed between .05 and .15, usually half a teaspoon of the nutricell added .07 worth of phosphate per 1/2 teaspoon. Then the tank would take down that .07 in another 24 hours, so I was bouncing between the range. I did indeed feed a few other things at the same time well I dripped the nutricell from a container, skimmer was usually left off for a good couple hours after the drip started, then turned on for the remainder.

As you can see, their spoon which is very small, they say 1 spoon per 30 gallons of tank water~
And you can see the 2.5 spoon-piles as I have a 75 gallon tank.
Now look at the 1/2 teaspoon.

Anyways through all of this I haven't even seen any hint of algae increasing. I stumbled upon the stuff in the jar before I thought anything was wrong. As a side note I had a monti have some tissue necrosis after the initial cleaning, it quickly healed over this period of time. Phosphates still within .05-.15 10 days later keep in mind before looking at the amount of what I fed vs suggested dose.

Interesting tidbit which led me to think, is it the resiliency of the ecobak plus+biodigest combo? Or the 'it stays in the water column longer' statement by new life spectrum that could have resulted in a lot of the food being skimmed out? This also makes me wonder if the .05-.15 phosphate levels I'm seeing is not inorganic phosphates, but brought about by the ambient level of bacteria in the tank(yay planktonic food), thus resulting in the "higher" reading as the bacteria are ripped of their phosphates during the hanna test.

[doctorwhoreefer]

No ideas?
I guess it'll remain a mystery then..

I've thought about doing more tests with the nutricell. I originally put the stuff in it's own jar in water, and left it out, stirred it a few times, kept taking ammonia tests. Took about 48 hours before the ammonia test went from .05 to 3ppm. So it works pretty good as an extended drip feeder..(if 48 hours can be considered extended)

But don't get me wrong, I'm not advertising, just relaying the solution I've found and it seems to be paying off given I didn't kill my tank :/ (yay bacteria!)

Anyone else use biodigest or bp's and ever experienced something similar? This has to be a first for me because I had zero spikes or anything. I think nitrates may have got to 5-10 ppm, but nothing else moved from the range I was running in before.

Cheers!