Any “Top of the line" GAC and GFO free SPS tank?

[rvela]

Here is my 58 gal with a 20 gal sump sps reef that has been set up since 2008. It is lit by an ATI Sunpower (36")T5 6 bulb fixture.

I have run GFO and carbon since the beginning even at half the recommended doses and finally took the GFO reactor off line, for about the past year and a half, and feel like the colors aren't washed out like it has in the past. I felt like I was starving my sps. My nitrates and phosphates always measured at zero...which I feel wasn't a good thing. Zoas would shrivel up and disappear and chalices never looked colorful. Now I run my tank dirtier than before, not to mention I only do water changes every 3-4 weeks. As for carbon, I use it passively in a bag in my sump. Now I feel the colors look good.

 

[A. Grandis]

I know I won't count much because I can't keep corals at home. I would love to!!!
I keep only zoanthids and fishes since 1995...
GAC is basically to remove organics and help with the yellow color of the water.
GFO is mainly to deal with phosphates.
I do believe in the passive use of GAC to help with spectrum and remove excess organics from the water to avoid algae. I use it very often and the tank looks great.
I do not approve the use of GFO because of the many side effects that could cause.
Some of them:
1) I do not believe that the problem with phosphates and organic nutrients really need to be solved with GFO.
2) I don't use it and don't have major problems with algae.
So it's proven to be unnecessary IMO/E.
3) It precipitates CaCO3! That will drop the alkalinity and likely also the pH!
That you already know...
4) GFO isn't completely insoluble, but in fact it's solubility is significant, comparing to the natural sea water, and could cause irritation on some of the cnidarians and other inverts we keep.
5) Sudden drops in phosphates levels can, and most likely will, stress zoanthids and corals with zooxanthellae in their tissue. Such stress could lead the organisms with zooxanthellae to suffer and be vulnerable to diseases and infections, lowering their immune system! The balance of nutrients could be so harmed that the zooxanthellae just can't deal with the lower levels of phosphates available, specially if it drops below natural sea water levels. Hard to test for that!!!
6) Most of the problems with the GFO are normally related to stress and bleaching, reported by many.

Besides that it is possible to keep most systems not using GFO and still have a great nutrient balance. I believe skimmer is a vital instrument and should be present in any marine system. There is nothing that could substitute the 24/7 action of a good skimmer. Perhaps only an open system would be similar, depending on the way the system is done.
The use of GAC is different. Only GAC will keep the spectrum unchanged, removing organics until it's exhausted. Only GAC all serve as a remedy to remove some of the unwanted chemicals from the water.

So, if I had a SPS system, I would use GAC, but I don't think I would really need to play with GFO. Skimmer all the way.

For further reading:
http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-11/rhf/

Just my $.02.
Very good thread!!!!

Grandis.

 

[trueblackpercula]

Not top of the line but getting there. I don't use GFO but I do dose prodibio and that's a source of carbon dosing.

 

[jackson6745]

Having been through many of the trends in the last 40 years of this hobby I have seen great looking reef tanks with every variation of carbon and GFO.

I've tried carbon 1 week a month, carbon all the time, GFO until levels are beneath some arbitrary number, GFO all the time, using reactors or passive with both Carbon and GFO. Now if I use either it's only for a short period of time.

I use all NSW that's filtered to 20 microns. Before my weekly 10% water change I filter the water I'm going to add with carbon for 24 hours. Match parameters and then make the change.

The tanks have good skimmers, not skimmers that extract the last degree of everything out of the water.

All corals are showing good growth and color, SPS included.

Looks fantastic! I love it :dance:

 

[rtbm]

one of four 7' prop tanks.

I stopped chasing phos # years ago and run carbon maybe once a year at most. I agree with Jeremy. I too come from the time when there was basically no such thing as Phosphate

hate to start anything by saying "there was a time when" but indeed about 7-8 years ago somehow we all had thriving sps tanks yet none of up had any idea about phosphate good or bad. Somewhere along the lines we were led to believe that phos has some integral part in sps success and everyone started trying to rid there tanks of it. Not surprisingly fast forward a few years and you see thread after thread about people with faded sps and other odd low nutrient anomalies.

I have always been skeptical of the whole phos craze and still feel that new comers that are made to believe that ultra low phos or nitrate for that matter will promote healthy sps are being mis guided . In my experiences the opposite is closer to the truth.Now does this apply to any and all tanks? of course not but I wish people would put there hanna checkers in the drawer and pick up a fox face or something if they are terrified by a little algae on their rocks. I call it fish food.

So maybe more of a confusion on my part than a mistake on others parts but I think that there is way way more important factors for thriving sps than practically ambiguous phos levels.

 

[rtbm]

Last time I checked

 

[trueblackpercula]

one of four 7' prop tanks.

I stopped chasing phos # years ago and run carbon maybe once a year at most. I agree with Jeremy. I too come from the time when there was basically no such thing as Phosphate

hate to start anything by saying "there was a time when" but indeed about 7-8 years ago somehow we all had thriving sps tanks yet none of up had any idea about phosphate good or bad. Somewhere along the lines we were led to believe that phos has some integral part in sps success and everyone started trying to rid there tanks of it. Not surprisingly fast forward a few years and you see thread after thread about people with faded sps and other odd low nutrient anomalies.

I have always been skeptical of the whole phos craze and still feel that new comers that are made to believe that ultra low phos or nitrate for that matter will promote healthy sps are being mis guided . In my experiences the opposite is closer to the truth.Now does this apply to any and all tanks? of course not but I wish people would put there hanna checkers in the drawer and pick up a fox face or something if they are terrified by a little algae on their rocks. I call it fish food.

So maybe more of a confusion on my part than a mistake on others parts but I think that there is way way more important factors for thriving sps than practically ambiguous phos levels.

Now that's top of the line wow get a build thread or tank thread would like to learn more about your practices.

Very well done.

 

[brad65ford]

one of four 7' prop tanks.

I stopped chasing phos # years ago and run carbon maybe once a year at most. I agree with Jeremy. I too come from the time when there was basically no such thing as Phosphate

hate to start anything by saying "there was a time when" but indeed about 7-8 years ago somehow we all had thriving sps tanks yet none of up had any idea about phosphate good or bad. Somewhere along the lines we were led to believe that phos has some integral part in sps success and everyone started trying to rid there tanks of it. Not surprisingly fast forward a few years and you see thread after thread about people with faded sps and other odd low nutrient anomalies.

I have always been skeptical of the whole phos craze and still feel that new comers that are made to believe that ultra low phos or nitrate for that matter will promote healthy sps are being mis guided . In my experiences the opposite is closer to the truth.Now does this apply to any and all tanks? of course not but I wish people would put there hanna checkers in the drawer and pick up a fox face or something if they are terrified by a little algae on their rocks. I call it fish food.

So maybe more of a confusion on my part than a mistake on others parts but I think that there is way way more important factors for thriving sps than practically ambiguous phos levels.

truer words were never spoken!

 

[Oldude]

I generally don't use GFO but often run a little carbon to polish the water.

 

[sahin]

Here is my 58 gal with a 20 gal sump sps reef that has been set up since 2008. It is lit by an ATI Sunpower (36")T5 6 bulb fixture.

I have run GFO and carbon since the beginning even at half the recommended doses and finally took the GFO reactor off line, for about the past year and a half, and feel like the colors aren't washed out like it has in the past. I felt like I was starving my sps. My nitrates and phosphates always measured at zero...which I feel wasn't a good thing. Zoas would shrivel up and disappear and chalices never looked colorful. Now I run my tank dirtier than before, not to mention I only do water changes every 3-4 weeks. As for carbon, I use it passively in a bag in my sump. Now I feel the colors look good.

You have a beautiful tank, I am sure I've seen more photos on the other forum. Thanks for sharing with us your GFO and GAC usage details. :thumbsup:

 

[sahin]

one of four 7' prop tanks.

I stopped chasing phos # years ago and run carbon maybe once a year at most. I agree with Jeremy. I too come from the time when there was basically no such thing as Phosphate

hate to start anything by saying "there was a time when" but indeed about 7-8 years ago somehow we all had thriving sps tanks yet none of up had any idea about phosphate good or bad. Somewhere along the lines we were led to believe that phos has some integral part in sps success and everyone started trying to rid there tanks of it. Not surprisingly fast forward a few years and you see thread after thread about people with faded sps and other odd low nutrient anomalies.

I have always been skeptical of the whole phos craze and still feel that new comers that are made to believe that ultra low phos or nitrate for that matter will promote healthy sps are being mis guided . In my experiences the opposite is closer to the truth.Now does this apply to any and all tanks? of course not but I wish people would put there hanna checkers in the drawer and pick up a fox face or something if they are terrified by a little algae on their rocks. I call it fish food.

So maybe more of a confusion on my part than a mistake on others parts but I think that there is way way more important factors for thriving sps than practically ambiguous phos levels.

As far as I can recall, it was D&D Aquarium Solutions who really pushed the Rowaphos product which most likely made the whole GFO thing come into existence. Certainly in the UK and Europe it was the case...

Before that I never used any PO4 remover. In fact in those early years I cant recall of any other PO4 remover on the shelves.

Looking back to those days, I had great colour in my SPS with just 250w MH's and regular water changes. No GAC. NO GFO. No Carbon dosing. I manually dosed 2 part (C-Balance) and Kalk via a drip setup every night before going to bed. I also had small AquaMedic Wooden air diffuser style skimmer. We also used to get nice quality Liverock coming into the UK. This was a 90G cube tank.

Thank you for your post. It certainly helped bring back a few memories.

 

[miggs76]

I finally decided to pull the plug on GFO for good. I don't care that my phosphate will creep up to .1 or .15. I have all SPS in a 60 gallon cube and my corals looked pretty bad. They were growing, but polyp extension on acro corals was limited and even though my phosphate was 0 my corals were brown. Slowly but surely my corals are getting nice colors.

 

[Peter Eichler]

As far as I can recall, it was D&D Aquarium Solutions who really pushed the Rowaphos product which most likely made the whole GFO thing come into existence. Certainly in the UK and Europe it was the case...

Before that I never used any PO4 remover. In fact in those early years I cant recall of any other PO4 remover on the shelves.

Looking back to those days, I had great colour in my SPS with just 250w MH's and regular water changes. No GAC. NO GFO. No Carbon dosing. I manually dosed 2 part (C-Balance) and Kalk via a drip setup every night before going to bed. I also had small AquaMedic Wooden air diffuser style skimmer. We also used to get nice quality Liverock coming into the UK. This was a 90G cube tank.

Thank you for your post. It certainly helped bring back a few memories.

Aluminum oxide based po4 removers have been around since the late 80's. They were fairly commonly used and some are still available.

 

[Bpb]

My colors have become faded over time with gfo, gac, and organic carbon dosing. I don't see the deep bold colors other tanks enjoy. This thread has motivated me not to run without those tools, but at least try to slowly reduce their strength down to half or less

 

[A. Grandis]

I would say use as needed, if so.
Should be used as a remedy, not continuously, I guess.
I've never used. That would be the last shot.
Have lots of fishes and zoanthids. Feed them all. No major algae problems.
Anyone can do it! We all know that...
Not worthy the risk IMO.

Grandis.

 

[therman]

I'm with Jeremy and Adam on this one. I ran a majorly low tech TOTM back in 1999-2001. Unfortunately RC lost the TOTM accounts prior to 2002 I ran an undersized Remora skimmer, fed the heck out of a 40 breeder, used a heap of maxijets and big aquaclear HOB filter for water movement, and had a GEO Ca Reactor v1.0 before George had a business. Some days I wonder if I will ever grow SPS again as well as I did back then :roll eyes: Free dorm electricity meant 880W of lighting over 40g wasn't a problem. Now I don't think I use that for my whole system with 10 times the water volume.

GFO, GFH (Rowa), Phosguard, or really any other type of PO4 reducer was hardly ever used years ago, and we only ran carbon passively maybe for a week at the most every month just to clear the water a little bit. Here are many tanks that ran neither, or only ran carbon passively a quarter of the time:

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-02/totm/index.php
http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-03/totm/index.php (check out his PO4 test reading)
http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-04/totm/index.php (note PO4 levels)
http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-06/totm/index.php
http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-09/totm/index.php
http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-03/totm/index.php
http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-07/totm/index.php
http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-10/totm/index.php
http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-11/totm/index.php (did run gac passively 24/7)
http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-01/totm/index.php
http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-02/totm/index.php
http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-09/totm/index.php (Ran carbon 24/7)

This gives you an idea, if you want to go and look at all of the TOTM setups from back then here is the link:

http://www.reefkeeping.com/joomla/index.php/totm-list

Carbon was a big debate back then of being ran periodically to polish up the water versus being ran 24/7. However I would say that anyone who ran it back 24/7 had it running passively except for a select few. Note that most of the tanks from back then didn't even test for PO4, let alone use chemical filtration to reduce it.

At MACNA 2003 in Louisville one particular speaking guest who is well known in our hobby did a pretty big promotion for Deltec during his presentation. Deltec was part of D&D Aquarium Solution who had been pushing the Rowaphos product for a few years overseas. The following year in late 2004 was when Rowaphos made a push into the US market and this was the very beginning of PO4 absorbers and reducers becoming mainstream into our hobby, and really the standard at which most include in their filter systems to date.

 

[brad65ford]

Thread stopper! Wow OMG, that is a 40g beeder! You my friend win! Would have love to see and read more about that setup.
:eek1:

I'm with Jeremy and Adam on this one. I ran a majorly low tech TOTM back in 1999-2001. Unfortunately RC lost the TOTM accounts prior to 2002 I ran an undersized Remora skimmer, fed the heck out of a 40 breeder, used a heap of maxijets and big aquaclear HOB filter for water movement, and had a GEO Ca Reactor v1.0 before George had a business. Some days I wonder if I will ever grow SPS again as well as I did back then :roll eyes: Free dorm electricity meant 880W of lighting over 40g wasn't a problem. Now I don't think I use that for my whole system with 10 times the water volume.

 

[Jeremy B.]

Tim's 40br was, and still is to this day one of my favorite all-time sps tanks, and the main tank that pushed me towards keeping all sps. The growth and coloration speaks for itself. That color you see is under 6500k Iwasaki's (best coral growing bulb of all-time) which are fairly yellow. The color you would see by having a more blue MH lamp to display them even better would be out of this world. I still love looking at the pics of this tank almost 15yrs later.

 

[brad65ford]

is there any more pictures of tims setup and pic's don't know how i've missed this one before. Would love to see the setup regardless , is there a sump?

 

[A. Grandis]

Oh no... too bad they lost the TOTM info!!
Do you have the article? Please post the pics and details.
Very nice!!
Back then was normal to keep 55 gal tanks with 2X 250W or 2 X 400W MHs!!!
Tagging...

Grandis.