Best gfo for a heavily bioload

[saltwater newby]

hello
I have a 75 gallon Red Sea Reefer with a lot of fish. 15 to be exact plus a cuc. I am running out of my brs high capacity gfo and wanted to see if there are better options based on experience for a small tank with a lot of fish. I currently do 10 gallon water changes weekly but I’m goong to switch to 15 gallons because I’ve been getting some algae and some cyano. I do have good flow with the use of my 2 gyres and I turned off the red and green lights on my radion gen4’s so Im sure the algae and cyano has to be the bioload and not enough nutrition export. I just finished my second dose of chemiclean and I am wrapping things up with a 3 day blackout. So I’d like to continue running gfo but didn’t know if there’s a better alternative out there like rowa. Also, Should I continue running my gfo mixed in brs dual reactor or is gfo more effective on its own and carbon ran in a bag? Thanks in advance.
Current fish list:
Small yellow tang
Mallenarus wrasses
Flame hawk
Starry blenny
Fire fish
2 clowns
6 chromis
Bangai caedinal
Pijama cardinal

 

[saltwater newby]

Meant to write best GFO for a heavy biloload guys guys, sorry....

 

[saltwater newby]

hello
I have a 75 gallon Red Sea Reefer with a lot of fish. 15 to be exact plus a cuc. I am running out of my brs high capacity gfo and wanted to see if there are better options based on experience for a small tank with a lot of fish. I currently do 10 gallon water changes weekly but I’m goong to switch to 15 gallons because I’ve been getting some algae and some cyano. I do have good flow with the use of my 2 gyres and I turned off the red and green lights on my radion gen4’s so Im sure the algae and cyano has to be the bioload and not enough nutrition export. I just finished my second dose of chemiclean and I am wrapping things up with a 3 day blackout. So I’d like to continue running gfo but didn’t know if there’s a better alternative out there like rowa. Also, Should I continue running my gfo mixed in brs dual reactor or is gfo more effective on its own and carbon ran in a bag? Thanks in advance.
Current fish list:
Small yellow tang
Mallenarus wrasses
Flame hawk
Starry blenny
Fire fish
2 clowns
6 chromis
Bangai caedinal
Pijama cardinal

 

[saltwater newby]

bump...

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

There is no best GFO in terms of its effectiveness. While it is possible some may have higher capacity then others, you just use more of whatever you have to attain your goals.

I used GFO from BRS, originally the larger particles, then when that went unavailable, the harder particles, then just to their normal GFO.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

I just got my first jar of bulk GFO from BRS. Seems GFO is pretty much the same across the board where as there are different grades of carbon.

 

[saltwater newby]

There is no best GFO in terms of its effectiveness. While it is possible some may have higher capacity then others, you just use more of whatever you have to attain your goals.

I used GFO from BRS, originally the larger particles, then when that went unavailable, the harder particles, then just to their normal GFO.

Hello
Thanks for replying . I’m reading a lot of positive reviews regarding rowa on BRS. I was thinking trying that one out. Have you ever seen stubborn cyano that even after 2 treatments of chemiclean and a 2 day blackout so far is still like if nothing happened??

 

[saltwater newby]

I just got my first jar of bulk GFO from BRS. Seems GFO is pretty much the same across the board where as there are different grades of carbon.

Thanks for replying
Gotcha!!
Makes sense

 

[saltwater newby]

I’m thinkig that aside from my heavy bioload my rock can also be the reason for the algae and cyano. When I started my tank, half the rock I started with was dry rock that I just dumped in the tank with the exception of a big piece of “cured live rock” that I bought from my LFS. Since I never cured that dry rock I’m thinking it might still not be a hundred percent matured after 2 years and it’s not doing a good job at filtering the water like live rock from the beginning could be doing at this point . Does that make sense? Can I swap some of that rock with some cured live rock sold at WWC?? Or will that start a new cycle and have a negative effect on the system??

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Before we go dumping a bunch of chemicals in the tank... What are your tank parameters? Do you currently dose carbon(vodka, sugar, vinegar, NOPOX)? Have you cleaned off the rocks and siphoned as much of the cyano as you can? How often do you do water changes and change out filter socks/floss? Do you have food flow in your tank, no dead spots on the sand?

 

[saltwater newby]

Here we go
2 gyres running at 70% I can see sand moving a bit
2 filter socks cleaned once a week
10 gallon water change every weekend sea sea blue bucket
5 stage ro/di with tds at 0 filters changed 2 weeks ago
Been using nopox at 3 ml for over a year but stopped 1 month ago I was using a dosing pump
Manually pulled algae off rocks and after got rid of all of it with a sea hare but once I got rid of th sea hare the algae Came back.
I’ve blown the cyano off the rocks and sand plus siphoned it but it keeps coming back in the same spots
Parameters
Nitrate 5-10
Po4 0.03-0.08
Salinity 1.025-1.026
Alk 8.3-8.9
Calcium 410-420
Magnesium 1360
Ph 7.8 day 7.6 night
All parameters are pretty constant

 

[DSC reef]

If it's a little cyano here and there I wouldn't worry to much and manually remove it when it appears. Does the algae keep appearing in the same spots? If so the rock could be leaching.

 

[saltwater newby]

If it's a little cyano here and there I wouldn't worry to much and manually remove it when it appears. Does the algae keep appearing in the same spots? If so the rock could be leaching.

Yup
The algae is in spots and so is the cyano.

 

[DSC reef]

IMO I'd would just battle it manually. I don't like dosing a bunch of things if not necessary. I get little patches of algae in the same areas on my rock as well. As long as the corals are growing and colorful I just manually remove week to week during the water change. Now if it was covering the whole tank then that requires a different approach. Lol

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Hello
Thanks for replying . I’m reading a lot of positive reviews regarding rowa on BRS. I was thinking trying that one out. Have you ever seen stubborn cyano that even after 2 treatments of chemiclean and a 2 day blackout so far is still like if nothing happened??

Chemiclean (an antibiotic) usually works, but if not, you might try a different brand in case it was a bad batch or some such thing.

 

[saltwater newby]

There is no best GFO in terms of its effectiveness. While it is possible some may have higher capacity then others, you just use more of whatever you have to attain your goals.

I used GFO from BRS, originally the larger particles, then when that went unavailable, the harder particles, then just to their normal GFO.

I think I’m the only case where Chemiclean has not worked

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Might be an antibiotic resistant type of cyano, but equally likely or more likely is something else went wrong (it wasn't actually as potent as it should be due to poor quality control or being too old, it got skimmed out, it got bound to GAC, it was destroyed in a UV, it was destroyed by ozone, the list goes on and on).

 

[saltwater newby]

Might be an antibiotic resistant type of cyano, but equally likely or more likely is something else went wrong (it wasn't actually as potent as it should be due to poor quality control or being too old, it got skimmed out, it got bound to GAC, it was destroyed in a UV, it was destroyed by ozone, the list goes on and on).

True
But
I didn’t do any of those during my treatment of CHEmiclean. Nonetheless, I’m going to contact BRS tomorrow and see if I can get another CHEmiclean sent out tomorrow. These guys have been super nice to me through at the time i have been in the hobby. If they don’t I’ll go to WWC and buy another one.

 

[litenyaup]

I run BRS high capacity gfo in conjunction with their carbon to polish. Have had great luck and cleaned up the nuisance algae with crystal spear water.

 

[rkpetersen]

What do forum members think of RowaPhos? I haven't looked into what's in it in detail but isn't it supposed to be ferric hydroxide, not GFO, or is that just marketing? It seems pretty powerful, maybe too much so.