Phosban Reactor

[Jaws]

I hooked my new phosban reactor up tonight but as it started to fill with water, it didn't look like it was mixing with the media very well. The water inside the reactor became immediately brown and merky. Is this just because I didn't run the media under water first? Would it be bad to release this into the water?

[Jack]

I run the first 5 gal through the unit into a bucket and dump it then replace with new salt water.

[reeferaddict]

Jason, I just ran mine externally in a bucket and changed the water every 5 minutes or so for about 20 mins until the water ran clear even on startup.... I don't think that stuff will harm your tank, but it sure couldn't look great! :mrgreen:

[Jaws]

Sounds good. Thanks guys.

[Gizmo]

i ran phosban in a hang on aquaclear. and it worked great. The instructions said not to rinse out the bag so I let her run as is. Water was a little brown, but it cleared up in moments. Phosbad works great for any one with a phosphate problem, or cyano as a direct result of phosban

[Jaws]

How about hair algae? I heard that it will stop algae from forming but will it kill existing algae?

[christyf5]

Well ultimately it should starve any exisiting algae, that uses phosphates, out of existence. I don't know what happens when that algae "melts away" (or whatever it does) into the water column and adds to nutrients, I assume its just skimmed out.

I take it you're using phosban in the reactor? I bought one about a month ago and used rowaphos in it for 3-4 days. I had 4 SPS frags RTN completely and two more had tissue recession from the bottom up when I took the reactor offline, once I did that the tissue stopped receeding immediately. :confused:

Right now I have carbon running in the reactor and it works awesome :razz:

I may try the rowaphos again but bring the reactor online slowly to acclimate the corals to less phosphates or whatever change they didn't like in the water. Either that or I'll be trying phosban soon.

Christy :)

[Gizmo]

I've never had a problem with hair algae (knocking on wood) But it worked great for cyano. I have a tang and two rabbitfish that do great work at any algae on the glass. Last time I had a cyano outbreak and it was bad, I shut down the lighs for 2 days. Kept them down to ~5hrs a day and ran phosban, after the 2 days, the cyano was completely gone, it had turned into what looked like detrius, the crabs and such had it cleaned up in a day and the skimmer was full, but I havent seen a hint of it since. (again knocking on the damn wood)

[StirCrazy]

I take it you're using phosban in the reactor? I bought one about a month ago and used rowaphos in it for 3-4 days. I had 4 SPS frags RTN completely and two more had tissue recession from the bottom up when I took the reactor offline, once I did that the tissue stopped receeding immediately. :confused:


Christy :)

did you rinse it first? I remember a bunch of people had this problem in the US but I can't recal what the cause was.

Steve

[christyf5]

yes I rinsed the living crap out of it and then let about 5 gallons of water run through it before I let the effluent go back into the tank.

[StirCrazy]

yes I rinsed the living crap out of it and then let about 5 gallons of water run through it before I let the effluent go back into the tank.

did you read the thread of reef frontiers about it at all about 6 months ago? I will try find it but I think it was about that and there was a common thread on what people were doing that had bad results. but even then everything seamed to get better afterwards.

Steve

[christyf5]

Yes I found those after I had the problems. :rolleyes: Theres a big one on RC and Reefsanctuary.com as well. I will eventually try it again (slower this time) but I'm just waiting for my tank to return to normal before I try it again. My first indication that something was going wrong was the incredible and almost immediate loss of color in almost every SPS I had. Suddenly everything was brown and I was like WTH is going on? It only took a couple of days for that to happen and then the tissue recession started. Things are just starting to color up again, but they're darned slow to come back.