Rowaphos - first time user.

[kilnakorr]

My phosphates has climbed abit, and I expect it to be an issue with my refugium/chaeto.
Will sorting that out, I have made a small reactor with rowaphos.
My PO4 is 0.30, so hopefully I can keep it there or get it down a bit with this tiny 'diy reactor', untill I get my chaeto to start growing again.

Question one:
Does the flow look ok?

 

[SPR1968]

Yes the flow looks fine, you basically want a simmering effect

just remember you will need to change it often to start out as it will become spent quickly otherwise it won’t work.

Test the output water is producing very low levels of phosphate if any and when it rises change it.

I rarely test phosphate these days as I just change it every 3-4 weeks or 2 months in my large system and that keeps it down very low. When it’s getting ready, I can see a sort of ‘dirty look’ on the glass

 

[MIKE NY]

The flow looks good,but it looks like a lot of rowaphos. In my experience to fast in lowering the change of phos has caused problems and also effected my alk too. I always started with a 1/4 of the recommeded doseage.

 

[BanjoBandito]

Be careful, I run a reactor on my nano with rowaphos and I can clean out .2 - .3 phos in about 2 hours of running it. Rowaphos works faster than regular GFO. I generally run mine whenever I go "daddy warbucks mode" with fish and coral foods.

 

[Uncle99]

Yup that looks to me as well.
Rowaphos is expensive and may exhaust fast at .3ppm phosphate.
An alternative would be to use an LC product daily to get from .3ppm to .15ppm, then run the Rowaphos to polish up that number to say 0.05-.1ppm if your doing a mixed reef.

 

[kilnakorr]

The flow looks good,but it looks like a lot of rowaphos. In my experience to fast in lowering the change of phos has caused problems and also effected my alk too. I always started with a 1/4 of the recommeded doseage.

Thanks. It's a very small 'reactor' (think it's 0.5L total volume). Total system is roughly 450L

 

[kilnakorr]

Be careful, I run a reactor on my nano with rowaphos and I can clean out .2 - .3 phos in about 2 hours of running it. Rowaphos works faster than regular GFO. I generally run mine whenever I go "daddy warbucks mode" with fish and coral foods.

Thanks for the heads up.
Better do a test after a couple of hours to see if has dropped.

 

[kilnakorr]

Just to update. I ran the reactor for about 4 hrs, then did my planned waterchange, and turned it off for the night. This morning I got 0.13 PO4.
This stuff is very effecient, and for a newbie like myself I'm surprised, and glad I didn't just let it run all night.

 

[kilnakorr]

So, I've run my little reactor for a few days now and PO4 seems to be stuck around 0.10.

Should I change the media already?

It could be the size / flow volume of the reactor or maybe rockwork etc. are slowly leaching po4.

 

[Cell]

Go slow, Rowaphos is fast and powerful.

 

[kilnakorr]

Go slow, Rowaphos is fast and powerful.

True, but po4 hasn't moved for 2 days.
I'll keep it running a couple more days, before I change the media. Will make a bypass at the same time, so I can easily tune the effectiveness of the reactor.