phosban reactor
- Thread starter cwschoon
- Start date
Bax
Premium Member
I can tell you I have been running the PhosBan in a media bag in my canister for about two months and although there has been improvment, it's just not doing the job. I am fighting a nasty red slime problem and PO4 has dropped to .025 from .05 the red slime is less but still a daily hassle.
I ordered a reactor and it should be in tomorrow. I ordered a Rio 180 to run it on. I think it'll be big enough to get proper flow through the media ... we'll see. I 'll let you know how I make out
I ordered a reactor and it should be in tomorrow. I ordered a Rio 180 to run it on. I think it'll be big enough to get proper flow through the media ... we'll see. I 'll let you know how I make out
I have been not overly impressed with phosban. I first had it under the trickle filter flow but was still reading PO. I then moved some into my HOT magnum but still reading 0.5 or so. I was skimming out some of the brown gunk for a while although I did not see it visibly in the tank. I never had any issues w. the regular "white" PO remover and may go back. What flow is the rio 180? I believe you are to use a max 100 gal flow.
Bax: .25 is a great reading! Look elsewhere for the cause of the cyanobacteria. Do a search when you can...if your flow and perameters are good, see what people say about droping in an EM tablet or two. It will kill the slime and in my experience, won't hurt anything, even though antibiotic treatment is a drastic step.
Bax
Premium Member
The Rio 180 will only do 80-90 gph at 1 to 2' of head so my thinking was it would be perfect to run wide open with this media reactor with 130 g of PhosBan media.
I am going to start the reactor with PhosBan, if it does not do the trick I'll switch media in a month or so.
I always thought thar your PO4 reading should be zero?
And I am really hesitant to use antibioticts in a reef.
I am going to start the reactor with PhosBan, if it does not do the trick I'll switch media in a month or so.
I always thought thar your PO4 reading should be zero?
And I am really hesitant to use antibioticts in a reef.
I was an industry rep for a long time..... .25 PO is amazing! I have used EM several times over the last 15 years or so and if used properly, no problem. Just be sure you are not just curing the symptom, when you should be curing the cause. In other words, if your water perameters are good, you have a skimmer and are doing things as you should, use EM, get rid of the slime and it won't come back....Turn off your skimmer and suspend carbon/phosban if you use it. Sure, it is drastic but it works. Do a search and see what others think. I used to call on the best stores in W. New York and Canada and know many who have used EM w. no problem.
I have been running a phosban reactor for about 3 months and it has finally contributed to the demise of hair algae. It takes time to remove po4 that is stored in the sand and lr. Just gotta have some patience along with your usual water changes. You will kill it. Also, how old are your lights?
Bax
Premium Member
cwschoon -
Not to hijack your thread but my tank was started in early Jan 04. So it's new. I cycled with 10 lbs LR from the LFS (some really sharp looking Tonga). After cycle added 30 lbs TBS LR and a clreanup crew. At four months I started adding livestock.
I have - a pair of o. clowns; a fridmani pseudochromis; lots of TBS hitch hikers; astrea snails and zebra hermits; for corals - GSP, zoos, frog spawn, trumpet, favia, porites, yellow sea finger gorg.
For lighting I have a 175w MH on a M57 ballast, 55w PC daylight, 15w NO 03 Actinic, and DIY LED moon lights
Actinitcs come on at 8 AM off at 9 PM
PC come on at 10 AM off at 9 PM
MH come on at 11 AM off at 6 PM (MH are 5 months old now)
LED on at 9 PM off at 8 AM
Water Params
Am 0
Nit 0
Nat usaully 0 never over 10
pH 7.9 to 8.2
temp 79 to 81 F
Alk 13 - 14
Calc 400 +
PO4 now usually about .25 has been .5 or higher
I dose Kents Super buffer, Calcium, Iodine, Magnesium & Strontium with makeup water about 3 quarts daily
The red slime starts up in the AM just after the PC turns on and really flourishes after the MH turns on. when I get home at night there are thick mats here and there on the LR and a coating across the open sand. Only very strong current seems to have any effect on slowing its growth in any of these areas. It get on my corals and is definitly adding stress. The use of PhosBan in the canister has lessend the growth but not ended it.
My guess is that the TBS LR is so loaded with live stuff when it is added to the tank that I am paying for not using cured LR with this red slime bloom, as long as it steadily improves, it'll be worth the extra effort in the long run but this is taking a lot of patients to address.
What cuases other than an elevated PO4 can bring on a red slime bloom?
Not to hijack your thread but my tank was started in early Jan 04. So it's new. I cycled with 10 lbs LR from the LFS (some really sharp looking Tonga). After cycle added 30 lbs TBS LR and a clreanup crew. At four months I started adding livestock.
I have - a pair of o. clowns; a fridmani pseudochromis; lots of TBS hitch hikers; astrea snails and zebra hermits; for corals - GSP, zoos, frog spawn, trumpet, favia, porites, yellow sea finger gorg.
For lighting I have a 175w MH on a M57 ballast, 55w PC daylight, 15w NO 03 Actinic, and DIY LED moon lights
Actinitcs come on at 8 AM off at 9 PM
PC come on at 10 AM off at 9 PM
MH come on at 11 AM off at 6 PM (MH are 5 months old now)
LED on at 9 PM off at 8 AM
Water Params
Am 0
Nit 0
Nat usaully 0 never over 10
pH 7.9 to 8.2
temp 79 to 81 F
Alk 13 - 14
Calc 400 +
PO4 now usually about .25 has been .5 or higher
I dose Kents Super buffer, Calcium, Iodine, Magnesium & Strontium with makeup water about 3 quarts daily
The red slime starts up in the AM just after the PC turns on and really flourishes after the MH turns on. when I get home at night there are thick mats here and there on the LR and a coating across the open sand. Only very strong current seems to have any effect on slowing its growth in any of these areas. It get on my corals and is definitly adding stress. The use of PhosBan in the canister has lessend the growth but not ended it.
My guess is that the TBS LR is so loaded with live stuff when it is added to the tank that I am paying for not using cured LR with this red slime bloom, as long as it steadily improves, it'll be worth the extra effort in the long run but this is taking a lot of patients to address.
What cuases other than an elevated PO4 can bring on a red slime bloom?
First, let me say I am no expert but have always had marine fish and corals. I did have the benifit of calling on amazing and awful stores for quite a few years too...I am sure many that are more learned can offer better advice. As far as causes and cures,if you do a search on "cyanobacteria" you will get all of the info you could possibly need. EM is eurethromyacin(SP?) in tab form sold in every fish store. You will be told to never introduce antibiotics to your reef and in general, this is good advice but for me, too black and white. Again,if you use antibiotics, be careful you address the CAUSE and not the symptom. For me, if I had an outbreak...only happened once that was really bad but have had a few more minor instances....and my water perameters were good, I would have no problem using EM to get rid of the slime. One of my tanks is a 75 gal reef that probably has 45 gals of water after the contents are factored in- For me, I always run carbon and PO resin because I overfeed my tank. I always skim and do 7-14 gals water change every other week-If this tank was covered in slime, I would drop in 4 or 5 EM tablets, turn off the skimmer...it would go nuts... and discontinue carbon/resins. You don't want to use too much EM but if you don't use enough and some of the slime lives, it may develop a resistance to the antibiotic and that is a cycle you don't want to get in. After 24-36 hours or so, I would do a 25-35% water change, put back carbon and start skimming. Watch the skimmer as it will really be foaming. Last but not least...many don't realize that lighting has a big effect on cyanobacteria. Really old bulbs will favor red slime growth. Again, this is what I would do. As as many people the same question then decide for yourself.
Scuba Dog
New member
I have a DIY fluidised reacotr that I charge with Rowaphos.....started it up and running on my SPS / clam reef at the end of may. It did the trick no cyno and starved out the green hair algae...also my sps growth rate went from stagnat to good.......I also have a quality Euroreef skimmer, and a cpr hang on the back fuge...plus i use rodi... since i have a few too many fish and i overfeed , I have to have some help with the phosphates......whevever I start to see a patch of cyno start back up i recharge my reactor with some freash Rowa.........and a few days later the problem is gone for a bout an month and a half to two months....
jdieck
New member
Well... Let's see were to start with my war story.
I have been fighting Cyano for a while covering all bases just to see it grow as if nothing...
For all my research the basics I found is that it can be caused/promoted by:
a) Excess Nutrients in the water Nitrate and Phosphate
b) Improper lighting length wave and intensity
c) Insuficient water changes (Affects (a) Above)
d) Insuficient water flow.
e) Excess Accumulated Organics.
f) Insuficient cleaning crew
I have spent quite some money on this as you may see:
here is what I did and still nothing until....
a) Trickle my skimmer to increase production. It is processing 1200 Gal/Hr for a 225 gal tank! Nitrates totally undetectable by LaMotte. This is less than 0.25 PPM! Cyano... Happy
b) Switched my radiums 20K to Ushios 10K got faster amaizing growth from my corals. Cyano... Happy
c) Switched to feed my refugium (loaded with Cyano) from the main drain to the main return (Purified water). Cyano... Happy
d) Replaced Fuge 55 watt PC lighting with two 250 MH. Cyano... Happy. I use half of the fuge for frags now.
e) Manually vaccum it our from the sand and rock surface, use brush on 330 pounds of Live Rock to clean take usually 8 to 12 hours once a week. Cyano... Disapear for a couple of days just to be in full bloom after that.. Happy
f) Cleaned/ replaced and added more pumps for circulation. Cyano.. Happy
g) Added Ozonizer. ORP increased from 300-310 to 340-360. Cyano... Happy
h) Added Phosban reactor and extra canister replacing Phosban once a week (Yes 500 grams of it). Phosphate difficult to read with Salifert, Got Hach test kit. Phosphate undetectable. This is less than 0.05 ppm Cyano... Happy
i) Increased water changes from 10%/week to twice 20% per week. Cyano Happy...
j) to my existing 200 or so snails I added 150 more Cerith, Nerite, Turbo, Nassarius and Trochus snails plus and four sand stars. Cyano.... Happy.
k) Reduced Feeding to less than half. Cyano Happy
As a result of all this actions Nitrate, Phosphate, Nitrite, Ammonia all absolutely undetectable. All small traces of hair algae, green algae completelly disappear, my fuge Chaeto stopped growing (Full of Cyano by the way) and had no longer Diatoms apear on the panes (Used to clean once a week) and the Cyano.. well growing and covering up to the snail shells!.
After a couple of months and $2500 poorer last week I decided that what was left was what I could not really measure which was excess organics despite the Ozone, Skimmer, water changes and reduced feeding and despite my reluctancy I decided to Nuke it....
Instead of using Eritromicin, I purchased two doses of Chemi-Clean and two of Red slime Remover... Both are supposed to oxidize organics.
Last Friday I made the first full dose application of Chemi-clean. ORP dropped from 350 to 150 in less that 5 minutes after the application as the Oxygen in the water reacted with the organics. After 24 hours back to 350 and I made a 20% water change... The cyano Happy... Sunday, After 48 hours I made a second application. This time after 24 hours all the cyano in the fuge was gone. The Chaeto was green again. About 90 % of the Cyano in the main went away and most amaizingly all corals polyp extension and clam's mantles were as I have never seem them before. All inverts, snails and ssand critters still crawling around. The rock coraline was bricgt and in just three days I have noticed it growing again. Something I have never seen is that within two days of the application my three cleaner shrimps and some of the crabs molted! (Might there be some Iodine in the product?) and my Clown pair spawn again!
Some of the remaining patches of cyano started have started growing back but this weekend (After a week of first tratment. I will go for it one more time. but this time I will vaccum the remaining patches before the application and use the Red Slime Remover.
My take of all this is that unless you have something very wrong with your system. Cyano is just there just no matter what you do. I am reluctant to use any unknown chemicals but I got to the point of either the Cyano kills my system or I kill it trying to kill the Cyano so I went for the second and seems like I am winning at least one battle.
If this works I intend on keep on using either of this products once a month or two months to keep it in line.
Wish me luck...
I have been fighting Cyano for a while covering all bases just to see it grow as if nothing...
For all my research the basics I found is that it can be caused/promoted by:
a) Excess Nutrients in the water Nitrate and Phosphate
b) Improper lighting length wave and intensity
c) Insuficient water changes (Affects (a) Above)
d) Insuficient water flow.
e) Excess Accumulated Organics.
f) Insuficient cleaning crew
I have spent quite some money on this as you may see:
here is what I did and still nothing until....
a) Trickle my skimmer to increase production. It is processing 1200 Gal/Hr for a 225 gal tank! Nitrates totally undetectable by LaMotte. This is less than 0.25 PPM! Cyano... Happy
b) Switched my radiums 20K to Ushios 10K got faster amaizing growth from my corals. Cyano... Happy
c) Switched to feed my refugium (loaded with Cyano) from the main drain to the main return (Purified water). Cyano... Happy
d) Replaced Fuge 55 watt PC lighting with two 250 MH. Cyano... Happy. I use half of the fuge for frags now.
e) Manually vaccum it our from the sand and rock surface, use brush on 330 pounds of Live Rock to clean take usually 8 to 12 hours once a week. Cyano... Disapear for a couple of days just to be in full bloom after that.. Happy
f) Cleaned/ replaced and added more pumps for circulation. Cyano.. Happy
g) Added Ozonizer. ORP increased from 300-310 to 340-360. Cyano... Happy
h) Added Phosban reactor and extra canister replacing Phosban once a week (Yes 500 grams of it). Phosphate difficult to read with Salifert, Got Hach test kit. Phosphate undetectable. This is less than 0.05 ppm Cyano... Happy
i) Increased water changes from 10%/week to twice 20% per week. Cyano Happy...
j) to my existing 200 or so snails I added 150 more Cerith, Nerite, Turbo, Nassarius and Trochus snails plus and four sand stars. Cyano.... Happy.
k) Reduced Feeding to less than half. Cyano Happy
As a result of all this actions Nitrate, Phosphate, Nitrite, Ammonia all absolutely undetectable. All small traces of hair algae, green algae completelly disappear, my fuge Chaeto stopped growing (Full of Cyano by the way) and had no longer Diatoms apear on the panes (Used to clean once a week) and the Cyano.. well growing and covering up to the snail shells!.
After a couple of months and $2500 poorer last week I decided that what was left was what I could not really measure which was excess organics despite the Ozone, Skimmer, water changes and reduced feeding and despite my reluctancy I decided to Nuke it....
Instead of using Eritromicin, I purchased two doses of Chemi-Clean and two of Red slime Remover... Both are supposed to oxidize organics.
Last Friday I made the first full dose application of Chemi-clean. ORP dropped from 350 to 150 in less that 5 minutes after the application as the Oxygen in the water reacted with the organics. After 24 hours back to 350 and I made a 20% water change... The cyano Happy... Sunday, After 48 hours I made a second application. This time after 24 hours all the cyano in the fuge was gone. The Chaeto was green again. About 90 % of the Cyano in the main went away and most amaizingly all corals polyp extension and clam's mantles were as I have never seem them before. All inverts, snails and ssand critters still crawling around. The rock coraline was bricgt and in just three days I have noticed it growing again. Something I have never seen is that within two days of the application my three cleaner shrimps and some of the crabs molted! (Might there be some Iodine in the product?) and my Clown pair spawn again!
Some of the remaining patches of cyano started have started growing back but this weekend (After a week of first tratment. I will go for it one more time. but this time I will vaccum the remaining patches before the application and use the Red Slime Remover.
My take of all this is that unless you have something very wrong with your system. Cyano is just there just no matter what you do. I am reluctant to use any unknown chemicals but I got to the point of either the Cyano kills my system or I kill it trying to kill the Cyano so I went for the second and seems like I am winning at least one battle.
If this works I intend on keep on using either of this products once a month or two months to keep it in line.
Wish me luck...
jdieck
New member
I used to feed twice a day, add cyclop and DT a couple of times a week, plus vitamins and garlic with every feeding and daily coral vite. My best guess is that the organics from all of this just kept accumulating.
On the list I forgot to mention a couple of more things I did. I added a Kalk reactor to support my Calcium reactor in the hope that high alkalinity (Increased from 9 to 11) will also reduce its proliferation.
Also what I did, suspecting too much accumulation under the sand bed as you mention I used a 3/8" dia plastic tubing probe to syphon different spots deep into the sand but the water always came out fairly clear.
When the Cyano apeared the sponge material began to die At the end my conclusion is that the organics accumulated first by the sponges (fair amount in between and under the rock) and then while it starte shrinking they were transferred to the Cyano itself and just cycled back with further accumulation every time I cleaned it and them being binded the skimmer and ozone were uneffective in removal.
On the list I forgot to mention a couple of more things I did. I added a Kalk reactor to support my Calcium reactor in the hope that high alkalinity (Increased from 9 to 11) will also reduce its proliferation.
Also what I did, suspecting too much accumulation under the sand bed as you mention I used a 3/8" dia plastic tubing probe to syphon different spots deep into the sand but the water always came out fairly clear.
When the Cyano apeared the sponge material began to die At the end my conclusion is that the organics accumulated first by the sponges (fair amount in between and under the rock) and then while it starte shrinking they were transferred to the Cyano itself and just cycled back with further accumulation every time I cleaned it and them being binded the skimmer and ozone were uneffective in removal.
jimwat
Premium Member
After about 3 weeks the Phosban reactor is helping eliminate the problem with hair algae in the main tank. However, it seems to have little or no effect on the cyano growing in the fuge. 3 days ago I decided to change the lighing on the fuge from 130w 65k PC (running 24 hours) to a 250w 10k MH (running on a light cycle opposite of the main). Almost all of the cyano has now melted away.
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