phos reactor creates more algae???

So I am not sure if I did something wrong or *** happened but I bought a nextreef mr1 phos reactor and added it to my tank around the last week of december. I filled it about half way with PURA PhosLock GFO and everything seemed peachy. After about 2 weeks I had my water tested and phosphates were at 0 after hitting around 2.0 ppm, all seemed well. Then out of no where after about a month of running I start noticing cyano starting to pop up all over my tank, I figured it might be a flow issue but still thought it was weird that a year after setting up my tank I am gettin cyano again. I made some flow and aquascape adjustments, did a water change and all seemed well for about a week or 2. Then and explosion of algae hits my tank, both cyano and gha. My phospates still low >.5 and nitrates >10, and the only thing I had really changed in my tank was the addition of the phos reactor. So about a week and half ago and decided I'd had enough and just unplugged the reactor, since then the algae is all but gone and my corals seems to be getting happy again.

My question is did I do something wrong? Should I have changed out my GFO (which I understood would not leach nutrients back in to my tank even if exhausted) or is the problem that I did not have the reactor completely full? Honestly I am really not sure and bit confused why the outbreak happened only after I added the reactor and is now gone after turning it off. I had it running my sump in the section that houses my skimmer which is also where the overflow runs in to, and from what I had read this was the best place to put it.

Any info or input would be appreciated.

 

Anyone out there have any ideas what went wrong?

 

I'm not positive but I think that the gfo can leach phos back in after a while.
Also, is your tank fish only or a reef

 

Its a reef tank, pretty much all softies + fish.

 

Weird. I thought i was the only experincing this. I also added a two little ishies reactor and filled with gfo then later experinced gha bloom. I never hqd any problem before i installed the reactor and my phosphates always been zero. I will try and turn mine off and see if it makes any difference.

 

GFO's do not leach phosphates back into the tank. you are also supposed to take it slow and not dose for over night changes (dose at half recommended for water amount ). maybe you added a bit to much to start????

what leaches back into the tank is things like phosgaurd made from aluminum oxide , they need to be removed in a few days normally. i think they state 4-5 days?

 

Yup, this can happen. I believe this is what's happening. Cyano is very effective at competing for any remaining phosphates. It can also fix nitrogen from the water column and dosn't necessarily need nitrate (or other forms such as nitrite, ammonia, ammonium).

Now, here is the kicker. Cyano uses compounds call "siderophores" to bind iron. these are some of the strongest iron binding compounds known. So, it is very effective at scavenging iron. I think that it is able to bind from the GFO, which also has accumulated significant PO4. Therefore when PO4 is low, it still may have a way to accumulate it, where as other competitors (algaes) don't.

I've found water changes, changing out the GFO more often, carbon and wet skimming are most effective. However, cyano can also recycle PO4, so just removing the source isn't necessarily sufficient to kill it. You may have to manually remove as water quality improves.

 

I have heard this this forum, however, Randy has stated a number of times that GFO can indeed leach phosphate back into the aquarium.

 

here is one example,
Phosphate binding to GFO (Rowaphos) is reversible - Reef Central Online Community

He's also gone into detail about it leaching back into the aquarium if Po4 is high in the GFO and low in the tank water. I don't have time to look for this right now, but I'm sure you can find it if your interested.

 

So if I'm reading this right phospate reactors are more trouble than they are worth? I mean keeping up with water changes alone with keep phos down and then I don't have to worry about a cyano bloom in my tank. But if I run a reactor I should expect cyano plus more water change?