How you judging your results? Based on visual... Current algae bloom. Or based on test kit results. My hanna meter showed lower po within hours and continued to lower for days until saturation was reached. If its algae, you won't "see" results really until you remove and see a slower or even better no growth rate.

Also if your po is being leached from sand or rock. You'll see no results till either leaching stops... Or slows to below rate of absorbtion. Before you worry about phosphate levels and removing it, I'd worry about the source. Water changes? Water top off? Overfeeding? Frozen foods? Liverock, sand etc.

I always wondered how you are supposed to be able to "link" them together?....Like Binare said carbon requires 400-600gph and the phosphate medias require 300-400 gph..........I have two reactors and run them with separate pumps because I didnt want the hassle of trying to find all the little parts you'd need to chain them together properly..

Its actually less parts to run em in series, 6" of tubing, as appose to another pump or making up a manifold. I'm not sure what reactors you are using but my TLFs recommend somewhere around 80-90GPH I believe for phosphate media. You want just enough so it "boils". The lower your flow... The more contact time with the media, if you go to fast contact won't be sufficient, carbon of course can be a little higher, but I still wouldn't push more then 200-300gph through it, for the same reasons. Concept is similar to sump design and flow, why push a couple thousand gph threw a sump when your skimmer, refugium and chemical media may only process a small fraction of that. Just food for thought.

My two are daisy chained together off of the same unrestricted Maxi-jet 400. I run about a cup of fine lignite carbon in the first and a cup of rowaphos in the second. Both medias I change monthly. My 270gal system always has very clear looking water, phosphate is undetectable now after a year. Originally when I started running the two I would receive .75 on an elos phosphate kit. Only now after a year am i finally seeing the bryopsis in my system going into remission. Originally I had perhaps a square foot of bryopsis and now all I have are just two very small patches.

ok.. so i have been using this for a week and i am noticing a change... and not for the better. there seems to be an increased occurrence of green algae (fine dusting) on the glass of the tank. i am wondering if i did anything wrong. (2 reactors - 1 carbon and 1 phosban)


I did a couple of phosphate tests (API test)
Source water (out of tap) -2ppm
RO water -0 ppm (no color change)
Tank - .5ppm
water out of reactor - between 0 and .25 ppm (hard for me to read this color but to me looks closer to zero)

Are you using rowaphos or another brand of GFO? A theory I've heard is that rowaphos will release a little bit of iron into the water which if combined with already high phosphate can further aggravate an algae problem until the phosphate is significantly reduced... :sad: This may have been the case for me at first as I experienced what seemed like a worse algae problem when I started using rowaphos. In time the product seems to have done the job though. Like everything else in this hobby it require patients... and money.

It is RowaPhos. I did run it clear before putting the return (of the reactor) into the sump.

I know patients is the key.... very hard sometimes especially when i see my poor little Zoas barely open most of the time :cry: (this has to be because of the phosphate.. everything else checks out fine- although having said that my acan and candy cane are doing really well:biggrin:)