Alternative uses for Phosphate Reactor?

Hi, everybody!

I have a 2 little fishies phosphate reactor lying around. I have a canister filter that runs carbon and due to my fuge my phosphates are <0.5 but my nitrates are still up there. I was wondering if I could convert my phosban reactor into some sort of filter (nitrate reactor, fluidized sand bed) to help reduce nitrates. Need some ideas and plans if anyone has done anything similar.

 

Do you mean your PO4 is .05? Because .5 is very high.

 

Yea, sorry I meant below 0.05

 

You could look into these new things. Basically a solid carbon source (like vodka dosing). I would do a little research on how carbon dosing works first though.
http://www.reefgeek.com/care_&_maintenance/Additives_&_Supplements/NP_BioPellets/

Vodka article.
Vodka Dosing by 'Genetics' and 'Stony_Corals' - Reefkeeping.com

 

Thanks Screwtape, I actually just started doing the "sugar" dosing a few days ago. So for about four days I have been dosing 1/8 tsp to about 55g tank plus 15g sump - displacement so I guess around 55g total. Anyhow, I havent seen any major cloudiness as reported from other threads I have read and cant really find a proper guideline to sugar dosing. I may go up to 1/4 tsp and see if the nitrates come down after a week or 2. I could probably even follow the method provided in the link if I could figure out the sugar to vodka equivalent.

 

Yeah I haven't seen as much info on sugar dosing as vodka for some reason. Maybe most reefkeepers are just alcoholics and have vodka handy by the tank all the time? I dunno.

 

I would specifically like to use it to lower nitrates, but how or what can I make out of this?