280g Inwall

[Delphinus]

Originally Posted by globaldesigns

Oh come on now Tony, you start things, and I have to follow! Now this? Reminds me of the BioPellet Days. Tagging along to see the overall results.

I still use the biopellets on the small tank for now (which is just a fowlr). The nice thing is when I test the water in the tank, PO4 is zero, NO3 is zero, so they seem to do their job. Since the addition of the small doliatus the valonia in there is receding big time too.

Since going to larger water changes per week (about 16% now whereas before it was 8%) I've noticed an overall bounce to the tank that wasn't there before. The downside is my consumption of salt is way up (well, double, I guess, technically). It's not really something that's measurable or even perceivable in photographs but it is something I really notice myself when hanging around the tank: it just feels better.

But the PO4 wasn't going down. As you know I've been trying to follow the zeoheads advice over at zeovit.com but if after 18 months of zeovit and the PO4 isn't going down, I think it's fair to say it's not going to. They kept saying "be patient, be patient, be patient" but there's a limit to what I think one can tolerate. PO4 in small quantities is something needed for proper biology but too much of it is detrimental: you see it in inhibited growth, subdued colours, algae growth, etc. .. We've talked of this before but 2 things are becoming clear to me about zeovit:
1) Possibly more effective "per gallon" in smaller tanks (ie., less than 150gal) than in larger tanks
2) Possibly its strengths lie in "preventing PO4 buildup" as opposed to "actually able to reduce PO4 once it's there."

I still believe there are some benefits to the system so for now I plan to continue with zeovit, although at a much reduced footprint compared to before.

For me it's been a "journey of understanding" when it comes to PO4. I've finally figured out how to test it properly and get reliable numbers, and I think it explains a bit of what I was seeing. I just hope I'm not introducing too much risk for bringing it down so quickly after it's been so elevated for so long.

So yeah, you might want to consider adding GFO yourself. I'll see where this takes me but I think I might stick with keeping it for the long term, regardless of whether I stay with zeo or abandon zeo completely down the road.

[Delphinus]

Day 6, tank = 0.12, reactor = 0.12. Looks like I'm replacing the GFO weekly at least to start with!

[reefwars]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

Day 6, tank = 0.12, reactor = 0.12. Looks like I'm replacing the GFO weekly at least to start with!

it wont stay that way, i had to use a fair amount at first changing wekkly or bi weekly then it slowly got cut down, im at about a cup changed every 6 weeks now

[Delphinus]

Cool, that is a relief to hear!

[reefwars]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

Cool, that is a relief to hear!

its powerfull stuff and it works almost instantly at reducing phosphates, i dont think i would run a tank without it now after seeing first hand how fast and effective it is.


your corals will thank you with lots of growth and pretty colors :P

[gregzz4]

You've got many pretty fish in there now. I'm awfully jealous.
Lookin' forward to more pics for my ideas.

[Delphinus]

(Thanks Greg!)

Well.. second weekend of switching to GFO, so thought I'd test PO4 again.

Tank seems to be 0.09 now. GFO outputting also 0.09, so seems steady so far at replacing weekly. Still only 1 cup of GFO, however, which is like 25% of the recommended amount, so perhaps this makes sense. In fact the more that I think about this, I'm not sure what putting more GFO in the reactor does beyond lasting longer (ie., if I put in two cups would that mean it could last 2 weeks instead of 1, but the PO4 absorption remains the same in either case? If so then it just comes down to a question of how often does one want to refill the reactor.) The only thing I can think of is that if one could safely reduce the PO4 down to undetectable levels, then using more GFO maybe means you can have more flowrate through the reactor as well, thus increasing the reactor's ability to remove PO4 as it is produced ... however if you're already at or near zero then I'm not sure what additional benefit there is to doing that in the first place. In no scenario does one really get to leverage the GFO.

At least one can decisively predict the amount of GFO needed however, which is kind of nice. The only thing left to figure out is how many cups are in a lb. of GFO, after that I should be able to predict down to the week when I'm going to need more GFO.

One thing I am noticing with the Hanna tester however is that about every 2 or 3 tests, I get a total wingnut value. What is weird is that it produces the same wingnut reading every time. At least the silver lining is that if I see this value, I can pretty much just say "yep bad test", dump the vial and start over.

The Hanna tester "ULR Phosphorous" ("ULR" = "ultra low range") gives you a reading that says "ppb" (parts per billion) but what's important to note is that it is "ppb phosphorous". To convert to ppm PO4 (which is what most of us reef aquarists tend to think of for PO4) you multiply by 3.066 and then divide by 1000.

So my earlier reading of 0.08 corresponded to a value on the tester of 29: 29 * 3.066 / 1000 = 0.088somethingsomething which I just round up to 0.09.

When I get one of these wingnut values, the output reads, almost always, 55. There have been a few cases where it wasn't exactly 55 but close. So basically now if I get a reading of 55 to 59, I discount the reading, dump the vial, clean it out and start over.

What really tipped me off to this was that I got a GFO reading of 55 once which was higher than the tank. I would expect the value to be zero, or at least zero, or the same as the tank, but it should be next to impossible for the GFO to output higher than the tank. The whole reason we use GFO over other PO4 absorbers is that it's not supposed to leech PO4 once it is expended. On the second test it gave a zero reading, which made total sense.

I wonder how many others have this issue. Kind of weird.

[gregzz4]

Just wondering why you don't multiply by 0.003066 to start with ?

Maybe Mindy will chime in about your usage and so on as I believe she knows lots about the HC GFO

[Myka]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

Hahahaha! Sadly I can't really tell if you're kidding or not. I know this is was one of the slowest builds ever (and the record probably still holds) but there's been water in the tank since .. um .. late 2010 or thereabouts.

Bahaha! I'm not kidding. I had no idea it was running now.

Originally Posted by gregzz4

Maybe Mindy will chime in about your usage and so on as I believe she knows lots about the HC GFO

I'm not sure I see that Tony has a question...? He seems to know what's going on (besides the funky results from the Hanna checker lol).

[fishytime]

I think you need to sit back and enjoy the tank mang.....this phosphate thing is gonna make you mental