As long as you dont have any plants that get their nutrients from the water
column (i.e. you only have plants that are sitting in dirt) you'd want a
phosphate level of 0. Anything above 0 means algae. If you do have plants
that get their nutrients from the water column you'll want enough so that
they are growing as you'd like but that your test kit reads 0. This means
that you need some phosphates otherwise your plants will stop growing, but
not any that you can detect. There's no real way to figure this out other
than trail and error so I'd shoot for the minimum reading that the test kit
can detect. If it can detect anything higher then obviously it's not being
used by the plants and will only go on to feed algae.

Sam

"Lee Brouillet" wrote in message
...
Does anyone know at what levels phosphate becomes a problem? I'll have a
test kit by LaMotte at home when I get there to test the water, but I
don't
know how much is TOO much . . .

--
Lee B.
See my Zone 9 a/b ponds at:
http://community.webshots.com/user/dragnp