Rowaphos, any suggestions before I try it?

[big t]

Hey People!

Well I bought a pot of ROWAphos a couple months ago. I decided not to mess with it before I left for my 45 day trip. Now I am back and I just picked up a new table saw, so I needed a first project for it. Today i decided to make that fluidized phos media reactor that i always needed. So is there anything that I need to know before i fire it up, besides to start with a small amount? Do i need to rinse the stuff first?

Thanks!

 

[NaH2O]

Oh yes - rinse and rinse and rinse. I ran the effluent into a bucket until it was clear, if you don't you will have a brown tank. Also, I put the little sock that came with the Rowa on the end of my effluent line, as a precaution to any particles making their way out.

Umm....do you think of projects just so you can get new tools? How did the table saw work?

 

[reedman]

Just like Nikki said, rinse the crap out of that stuff.

 

[big t]

Nikki the table saw is working great! Now I just need to build a shop to fit it into . Ok so when you rinse it do you run it on your tank and run the effluent out into something else, and do a water change? Or do you run in in rodi water first untill its clear? Thanks!

 

[Dr B]

Big T

I am also planning to start rowa in the next couple weeks. I am really nervouse for my sps.
I am going to rinse the rowa out with RO/DI water first.

From numerous discussions with a deltec rep, and other people who have tried it... the best thing to do is use slow flow. Supposedly the RP is efficient enough that it will suck most the phosphates up in one swoop through the reactor, and therefore you want your flow to be slow instead of just putting in less media. Mojoreef has also suggested this to me.
Hopefully everything goes well... I am unsure of your tank, are you stocking sps?

 

[big t]

Hey Dr

Thanks for your input. I have a full sps tank, with about 25 different types. Most of them are doing pretty well, but I think that phos is their main problem. I had a dsb puke on me last feb, and a upgrade in may. I don't think that anything is really doing as good as id should be doing. I think that the certain rocks are still saturated in phos and still slowly leaching it back out. Hopefully this will speed that up. I have heard that you should start out w/ a small amount so that you can slowly acclimate your sps corals to having a really low phos environment. Then over a month or 2 add more and more to the reactor. That was my plan anyway.

 

[tamarindthai]

i ran RP start of no rinse ,nowater flow just let it sat for 2 days till water in the chamber clear then start to run it very slowly,then increased it week later.,,instruction said never rinse the RP?

 

[Dr B]

Big T

You are correct in wanting to acclimate the tank to low PO4.
However you are wanting to do it by the wrong method. In the previous method I explained why low flow is better than less media.
You can still run less media... but low flow is more effective.
I plan to run slightly less media than recomended and really low flow for the first while.

 

[Curtswearing]

Tamarindthai,

I didn't rinse mine but I also did not let any of the initial brown water enter my tank. I did a waterchange and ran all of the old waterchange water through my reactor. I also put a sock over the output after I saw how much brown material collected on a friends sock.

Here's why. This is just a theory regarding Iron dust but it seems to be a pretty good theory to me. Read this thread on ROWAphos vs Phosban.

 

[NaH2O]

Big T - I just ran my effluent water into a bucket until it was clear. I had newly mixed water ready to fill up what I used out of the tank.

 

[tamarindthai]

i do have the issue now: tri color turning brown/using RP,,while other doing great?

 

[big t]

Well Ok thanks everyone! I ran the reactor in a 5 gallon bucket of RODI for a couple hours while I went for a bike ride, and then ran about another gallon of clean RODI thru it to clear it and put it to work on the tank. It seems to be working how I planned as far as fluidizing so hopefully this is the key I have been missing! I wan my sps to do the opposite Dang, they need to go from back from brown to beautiful!

 

[Dr B]

How much flow are you running through there?
I plan so slow that it prolly wont fluidize at first...

keep us updated.

 

[DonW]

Tom
You only need just enough flow to barely fluidize the media. Dont get it zinging around this will cause friction and turn the partical size to small. You really only need a tiny little reactor to get the proper amount of media fluidized.

Don

 

[big t]

Well I set it so that it is just rolling around a little in the chamber, maybe I will go turn it down a little. I have about 2 " of media in there, and the smaller particles are floating up to around 3-4" and the big particles are just slowly rolling around in the bottom.

 

[Scooterman]

Oh yes - rinse and rinse and rinse.

I don't know if it is the same but the instructions from ROWAphos from what I read tells me not to rinse, I just put it in the sock & let her rip. Like I said I'm not sure if it is done the same way but they made it very clear on the package not to rinse. They have good infor on their home website.

 

[DonW]

Well I set it so that it is just rolling around a little in the chamber, maybe I will go turn it down a little. I have about 2 " of media in there, and the smaller particles are floating up to around 3-4" and the big particles are just slowly rolling around in the bottom.

Just rolling is perfect. I run the output in my filter sock. Be sure to keep the input far away from your kalk drip.

Don

 

[tamarindthai]

At this time i shut down Rowaphos reactor,,to see any of brown turn back to beautiful again....,wish me luck

 

[NaH2O]

I don't know if it is the same but the instructions from ROWAphos from what I read tells me not to rinse, I just put it in the sock & let her rip. Like I said I'm not sure if it is done the same way but they made it very clear on the package not to rinse. They have good infor on their home website.

Scooterman - I spoke with the person at the Rowa stand at MACNA, and he indicated it needed to be rinsed. I think new instructions are coming out or are out on newer containers....I don't remember which.

 

[Dr B]

How is everything working?
I just got my 5l bucket of rowa, and now I have my reactor. Waiting on a test kit before I get started.... prolly a week or so.

It says when using the rowa in bag or something, no need to rinse it. But when it is being fluidized it should be rinsed.
I would personally rinse no matter what. But id do it with RO water as to not affect any of its life.