GFO (PhosBan) - Just How Good Is It?

[JetCat USA]

How Good Is It? & How Much PO4 Will It Take Out Before It's Exhausted?

well a fellow reefer on the board here posted a thread that got my interest peaked with the removal of PO4 from one of my FO systems, as well as wondering how quickly the PhosBan would exhaust its self...........to make a long story short.........180g tank w/ 225g system volume, Tank is BB and has roughly 150 lbs of LR in it........hasn't has a water changed sense Oct 2004 and has had all top offs done with tap water. Coralline hasn't showed much signs of growth for several yrs now, but isn't dieing back either.

Tank has 3 large tangs, a 6 yr old pair of Clarkii's, a huge female Tomato clown and a Dusky damsel in it. it would be an under statement to say they are Fat As Ticks, they are fed 5-6 times per day a varied diet of just about every type of food offered in the way of flake/cyclop-eeze/every type of frozen food/golden pearls/etc........

the NO3 levels with a PinPoint monitor are 23ppm
PO4 at a nice 2.94ppm with a Hanna Low Res Phosphate Colorimeter.

i took a PhosBan 150 reactor and added 2 cups of PhosBan to it and slowly cracked open the valve till a mini-jet400 started to fluidized the media.

the start of this was at 1930hrs 09 Aug 2007 w/ PO4 @ 2.94ppm (i didn't take a pic here, wish i had of)

an hour later at 2030hrs PO4 had dropped to 2.05ppm


at 2330hrs it had dropped to 1.32ppm


at 0730hrs 10 Aug 2007 the PO4 tested @ 0.72ppm


that afternoon at 1600hrs PO4 was @ 0.45ppm


about 30 min ago at 0230hrs 11 Aug 2007 PO4 @ 0.36ppm


for the volume of water in this system it seams the media is able to absorb a pretty decent amount of PO4. I'll keep testing till it stops dropping and then i intend to put the media into some RO/DI water (it tests 0.00ppm) and see if the media will leach the PO4 back out as allot of posts have claimed it will.

[JetCat USA]

Slowly But Surely

it continues to drop. hate to change the media out till it has stopped pulling the system down but it's slowed considerably, it could be the appearance of the slowness is the result of leeching out of the rock so I'll stick with it a bit longer before swapping out the media.

0930hrs 11 Aug 2007

[craab]

pretty impressive, but what is more impressive is that you have a meter to read it. What will be interesting to see is that once the media is exhausted and you renew it in the oven, how effective it is then.

[JetCat USA]

I've never renewed GFO in the over, i toss it out and replace it but that might be an interesting thing to try thanks for the suggestion, do you have a link to where the baking has been done?? or the temp and duration required to reactivate it??

thanks.

[old salty]

Very interesting experiment!! What is the phosphate level of the water that exits the reactor vs. the phosphate level of the tank? Folks like me tend to keep the GFO until the output of the reactor is the same as the tank level. This is done with test kits rather than meters, so may be a bit off.

[sabbath]

I am subscribed as I have been fighting .5 PO4 for over a year. I leave the GFO in for a month at a time. Your study may tell us we are not changing it enough!

[craab]

check out phosban's website, they have directions for renewal on there.

[JetCat USA]

old salty

i haven't tested the output of the reactor, costs about 2 bucks a test so i try not to get to carried away with it as long as the tank levels are dropping.

on my reefs they stay at 0.01 for several months, with a Salifert test kit i used to think the output of the reactor was always zero but with the meter i discovered it's not most of the time, even with new media.

with that said it would be my opinion you can't test the output of the reactor and get an inclination as to when the media is exhausted.

[JetCat USA]

Originally posted by craab
check out phosban's website, they have directions for renewal on there.

anyone got a direct link, i looked all over two little fishies dot com and can't find that.........

[JetCat USA]

Don

0.50 seams a bit high to me for any system running the reactor. with the 2 cups of media in this one it's pulled 225g down over 2.50 in 48 hrs. does your system drop to zero when you replace the media??? might be a test kit error, that's why i went with the meter, got tired of color guessing and false zeros.

[sabbath]

Originally posted by JetCat USA
Don

0.50 seams a bit high to me for any system running the reactor. with the 2 cups of media in this one it's pulled 225g down over 2.50 in 48 hrs. does your system drop to zero when you replace the media??? might be a test kit error, that's why i went with the meter, got tired of color guessing and false zeros.

That might be part of my troubles here is that I DIYed a reactor. Maybe that it is not working right. I changed the media yesterday. So I am off to test now.

[JetCat USA]

the TLF PhosBan 150 is an excellent little piece of equipment for the cost. Dr's F&S had them on sale a few yrs back for 20 bucks each so i got 4 of them, should of got one for every tank but if i had, i wouldn't be having all this fun with this test

[sabbath]

I tested my DT after about 17hrs of replacing it. It did go down! I only have a API test so the scale is 0 then .5 and the color is much closer to 0 then .5 this time. YES! Now I wonder how long it will last too.

I think I will order the phosban reactor today. Time to do it right.

[old salty]

Gotcha. I thought the meter was like a pH meter where you just stick a probe in the water.

[Gary Majchrzak]

great thread

[ikaros]

i didnt think that stuff actually worked but thanks for testing, i will actually have to start using the reactor now!

[JetCat USA]

Thanks Gary

ikaros,

I've used it for for a good many yrs and always thought it did a great job, i did however have my doubts about how much it would remove for a given amount of media.

Anyone

I've searched high and low and found nothing at all on renewing GFO, if anyone has a link or info it would be appreciative.

[JetCat USA]

UPDATE

we've got a winner, 0.26 still after another 5 hrs, i think we've hit exhaustion. seams that for the average Joe not trying to get all scientific and precise about it, 2 cups of PhosBan will pull 2.68ppm of PO4 from 225g of water, thats about an average of 1ppm/cup/100g not to shabby.

with the comment:

Originally posted by AZDesertRat
This has been tested exhaustively by water treatment plants wordwide and it does not release things. GFO and GFH have been used in potable water for arsenic treatment for years. Thats the biggest reason the water treatment iindustry has gone away from aluminum based media since it is well documented it does release contaminants. GFO can be used for several different contaminants including arsenic and phosphates among others.

i think I'll just dump the media out and reload with new, no need to spend the time testing for leeching and i can't seam to find anything on the baking the media so it'll just add to the growing pile in the back yard

[KurtsReef]

Thanks for sharing the test, very interesting. Have never used phosban..but may in the future.

[sabbath]

Originally posted by JetCat USA
UPDATE

we've got a winner, 0.26 still after another 5 hrs, i think we've hit exhaustion. seams that for the average Joe not trying to get all scientific and precise about it, 2 cups of PhosBan will pull 2.68ppm of PO4 from 225g of water, thats about an average of 1ppm/cup/100g not to shabby.

with the comment:


i think I'll just dump the media out and reload with new, no need to spend the time testing for leeching and i can't seam to find anything on the baking the media so it'll just add to the growing pile in the back yard

It would have been an interesting test, to see what your spent GFO did in a small fresh batch of salt water for a few weeks to see if it did leach back. I might have to try this next time. I'm curious.

[Gary Majchrzak]

I don't have a Hanna Low Res Phosphate Colorimeter. I wish I did.
When I tried Rowaphos for the first I knew (visually) that something was happening within the first few hours. (There's an old post somewhere on RC by me.)
I wish somebody would test some PURA Phoslock and perhaps some Rowaphos and post the different results.

[Ellery]

I must say this is an excellent thread. How much was the hanna Phoshate meter?

[JetCat USA]

Ellery

they just happen to be on sale at the good Drs F&S for about 170 bucks this week. the test reagents (not included with the meter) are 20 bucks. after about 200 tests the per test cost drops considerably compared to say a Salifert kit. it's allot like a calcium reactor, you've got a hefty up front cost but long term it's cheaper.

Gary

I'd be happy to do the tests with any other media if someone wanted to provide the media for testing, I've got another system with a 100g system volume that's at 0.9 currently.

I've also thought about getting some of the AZNO3 to try out on the above system, it's keeping steady at 23-25ppm NO3, if i do, i'll post the results of that too.

[Scuba Dog]

Loging on to this thread thanks JetCat for the informative study. Two part solution...reef chili has some media quite a bit cheaper than rowaphos or phosban also...he sells it in bulk.

[boxfishpooalot]

great thread!

It would be of value to most aquarists to know what your alkalinity in the aquarium is now, as gfo is known to causes alkalinity drops. Want to test it? Im a believer now, maybee ill try some in my fo.