BRS Carbon

i have a question for those running the BRS carbon in a reactor. how much do you add to your reactor and your tank size and how long do you run it? and how often do you change it? ok i fibbed i have 3 questions ...wait i have another... what one of the two that BRS recommends for a reactor do you use?

 

Heres a calculator to help determine how much to use.
REEF CALCULATOR - English
I do run there carbon but don't use a reactor. I would think pellets would work the best. As far as how often to change it . It really depends on the bioload of your tank but once a month is when I change mine.

 

I'm asking because i just bought bright wells Brightwell Aquatics Carbonît-P Premium Aquarium Pelletized Carbon (Fresh or Salt) 500g / 1.1 lbs. it says to change it in 24 to 48 hours? or monthly if you only run it for 1-2 hours a day. thats just crazy. i was using chemi-pure but wanted to run the carbon in a reactor and chemi-pure says not to unbag it which in the bag it doesn't fit in my reactor. i feel the reactor will make the carbon more efficient .

 

vinnyboombatz... thank you that calculator and the side instructions answered my questions. i have never seen that calculator on their site. nice! that takes the guess work out. now i have an idea where to start at. and 2 weeks till it needs to be changed is more like it. that i can do.

 

I use the rox 0.8 in mine and change both the gfo and carbon every 2-3 weeks. I found there instructional videos very helpfull in my choice of what to run. It shows a time laps with dye in the water and how long it takes ea of the carbons to remove it.

 

thats what in thinking I'm going to run them in one reactor and change them out together. i might be able to run less gfo than called for that way also. so it may equal out.

 

Cut the BRS calc recommendations in half to start and go from there. As for changing, GAC does loos a lot of capacity withing the first few days. A week seems to be okay though, after that it starts to turn into a biofilter and is pretty useless. You don't need to replace it weekly though, just rinse is and grind it up a bit to expose new surface area. Basically just need the surface to stay clean, once the pores are clogged by detritus/bacteria it dosn't work well, but it is easy enough to clean it. Still I would replace monthly or so at least.

 

i will change both out 2 to 3 weeks I'm thinking.

 

thanks, why are you saying to cut the recommendations in half?

here is another question, someone at my local fish store told me gfo does leach back into the system when its used up. have you heard this? he sold me some liquid phosphate remover. i tried the liquid and seen no results, maybe i used it wrong? or my feeding added more than it could remove? the gfo seems to work better for me. he says he uses this liquid phosphate remover and his phosphates are 0.002 ( he is not a newbie to the store or to reef tanks, been in the hobby a while now ) he told me look into it that people have dropped used gfo into clean 0 phosphate water and than tested later to get a phosphate reading. have you ever heard this?

 

wow I'm using way to much carbon. Calculator says use 9 table spoons. I have BRS reactor and I could have sworn that it said to fill the canister to the top. Guess I need to pay closer attention to the instructions. Although, I haven't seen any negative side affects.