Sk8r
07/18/2014, 09:49 AM
I started using GFO seriously in January to cure a phosphate load. One jar per 50 gallons in a reactor, 3 change outs of medium.
For the record, we have just now achieved algae demise. The rocks are clean and the last of the algae is looking really unhappy.
Just to let you know. This tank has a functioning, healthy fuge. Not enough. I decided GFO was the only sensible way, and applied it in a reactor, which is the way that works best, and it still took 6 months to knock it.
That's the way with phosphate. You can remove what you've got, but as rock soaks and exchanges water with your tank water, it leaches out more of it to replace what your method sopped up. If you don't use enough GFO, and don't change the medium out [there is unhappily no way to tell when it saturates, but I'd say every month, for the first two or three months] ---you can't get rid of it. Remember inside those rocks (and I have some big ones---pretty, but big) --is a faucet pouring out phosphate, and it can take a while for all of it to work its way into reach of the GFO.
It hasn't affected my fuge, which is a dark green mass of cheato. But rock-algae is almost all GONE from the tank,and the incidence of film algae on the glass is way down, too.
For the record, we have just now achieved algae demise. The rocks are clean and the last of the algae is looking really unhappy.
Just to let you know. This tank has a functioning, healthy fuge. Not enough. I decided GFO was the only sensible way, and applied it in a reactor, which is the way that works best, and it still took 6 months to knock it.
That's the way with phosphate. You can remove what you've got, but as rock soaks and exchanges water with your tank water, it leaches out more of it to replace what your method sopped up. If you don't use enough GFO, and don't change the medium out [there is unhappily no way to tell when it saturates, but I'd say every month, for the first two or three months] ---you can't get rid of it. Remember inside those rocks (and I have some big ones---pretty, but big) --is a faucet pouring out phosphate, and it can take a while for all of it to work its way into reach of the GFO.
It hasn't affected my fuge, which is a dark green mass of cheato. But rock-algae is almost all GONE from the tank,and the incidence of film algae on the glass is way down, too.