PhosBan reactor
 

a newly acquired tank, came with a hair algae problem.
i'm using r/0 water, limiting the lighting (and in the process of changing all the bulbs), limit feeding, rinse frozen foods...
would a phosban reactor be the best choice to eliminate the hair algae?
what am i missing, as the algae continues to grow......
any other suggestions?

i had real bad hair algae in my tank, i set up a mj1200 split on to 2 phosban reactors 1 full of phosban and the other full of carbon and after about 2 weeks it was falling off the rocks

Are reactors good for smaller tanks?? Or can they even be ran on a small tank? Can a reactor be purchased locally? A phosban reactor sounds pretty effective.

i think that's the way i'm going to go. setup one to phosban...

I got mine from Golds.And yes you can use them on small tanks,you just use the proper amount of media for your tank size.

But IIRC you have a 20g? If so you may find a couple 50% or more waterchanges to work.So lets say 10g w/c a week,thats 15 w/c for $60.And you wouldn't have to dose anything or even use a skimmer.

Had you run PhosBan prior to this? ....in a canister say?
I have run RowaPhos in canisters on both my reef tank and FOWLR. With the FOWLR my phosphates were too high so I bought and setup a PhosBan reactor. The phosphates climbed even higher. So I went back to running the media in the canister and the phosphates fell back. I don't know for sure, but IME, these reactors are overrated. Mind you I was running RowaPhos in it, and not PhosBan, but that shouldn't matter, IMO. I may try it again in the near future.

Cheers,

Maybe you had to much flow through the reactor.

Has anybody built a DIY PhosBan reactor? It is basically just a container to hold the Phosphorous removing media while water is pumped through it. I have considered the idea of building my own.

I don't think so. I ran a MJ 1200 on mine too, and if I remember right I had the valve wide open. The tumbling action of the RowaPhos came up the chamber by only about 2"-3". When I first fired it up I remembered thinking...."That's it?". If anything, it seemed it needed more flow. Maybe it was because it was RowaPhos, which is heavier/denser than PhosBan.

Cheers,

Should be easy to build.Water flows from bottom to top,need a sponge on the bottom,then media,then sponge for top,then lid and exit fitting.

I'm running rowaphos in a phosban reactor, using a mag pondmaster (rated for 150gph). I've got the valve at about 60%. You only turn it so the top of the media looks like it's simmering. Just a slight waving motion at the top 1/4" of the phosphate media. I got rid of my monster hair algae problem with this setup. Trust me, it was BAD, since I was cycling liverock and turned on the lights almost right away... won't do that again lol :redface:

as for rowaphos vs phosban, advanced aquarist analyzed them, and found them the same pretty much. There IS a ph drop if you run your ph at around the 8.9 range, but if you run at about 8.3, then you probably only will have a 0.1 drop for a couple days.

Be careful, you can shock your corals with the sudden drop in phosphates, these things work so well. You can go from 0.5ppm to 0.0ppm in an hour. And measuring phosphates with a kit is pointless, since they don't measure organic phosphates, which is what most forms of nuisance algae utilize. Kits measure inorganic phosphate, which ends up precipitating with excess calcium anyways.

Ah....maybe I did have too much flow then. I'll have to try it again.

Thanx and cheers,