Phosphates and phosban

I have to get my phosphate numbers down. Right now they are 0.08. I will be using a Phosban Reactor 150. The instructions say to wet the phosban media. Has anyone out there used this product and could you explain to me how they wet the phosban media before placing it in the reactor?

 

Put it in the reactor dry. Fill up a couple of buckets with water and run the reactor with the waste going down your sink until it turns clear. Then, unplug it and install it on your tank.

 

I have used Phosban - that is the little white balls right? (EDIT _ no it is the slower stuff - white balls are from kent) That is the only thing that ever worked for me - powerful stuff. Thanks for the reminder. Lack of water changes and heavy mysis shrimp feeding (my cardinals) has my tank looking like the Chicago river at St. Patty's day.
I am going to the LFS today to pick up a 10 gallon tank to do bigger water changes with a powerhead and hose. I think I will get some of that as well to use for a bit until I get my tank under control again.

Edit - Good plan inwall.

 

Let us know how the Phosban worked for you. I'm having a minor phosphate problem as well and I don't think my GFO is working very well, so I picked up some Phosban the other day. Hope the reactor works well for you!

 

Thanks Inwall75, will do as you suggest. No Matt, It's a brown fine powder compound. And Kcbrad, I will be trying the reactor with the phoseban tomorrow and will test my phosphates in a few days. I will let you know the results. Thanks everyone.

 

i have used phosban/phoszorb in the past really great stuff it gets warm when u get it wet for the first time. and i was under the impression that phosban is gfo for the most part. purigen was something that i used alot as well nice stuff and the best part is that it is renewable so you really need to buy like once a year.

edit- here is an article i found

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/june2004/review.htm

 

Im currently running a phosban reactor 150 with rowaphos, just set it up last week. I'll let you know how it works for me.
Upon start-up i did not flush the brown junk out. My skimmer pulled it out of the tank over night though. So far the reactor is a pretty slick contraption. I can set my flow rate based off the amount of movement with the rowaphos.

 

Ah yes between you and a note from a Curtis I have my memory back. The stuff I was referring to is Phosguard. I have used the brown Phosban stuff as well. The latter I did not like as much. Even though I was using a Phosban reactor, it was leaching into my tank and there was a bit of tea color going on. I put some floss in a fish net at the output of the reactor and this helped, but I had to stay on it - replacing it every couple of days or at least rotating it. That annoyed me. The floss would turn brown. This is even with the sponges in place in the reactor. It was too fine for the sponges it seemed.

I recall the best results with Phosguard (the white balls). I just ordered the latest generation of the phosban reactor (I had the original) and plan on running Phosguard for reasons above. For what it is worth!
matt

 

Thanks Matt. Regarding the phosban leaching into your tank, do you remember if it still leached into your tank even after you reduced the flow using the ball valve?

 

I have the two little fishes 150 phosban reactor, running phosban. I rised my media prior, actually similar to how Curt suggested (I filled one bucket with RO, ran ~4 gal into an empty bucket). My PO4 are near zero and I do not have any leaching of the media into my tank. I'd tend to believe those who see any leaching have too great of a flow rate through the reactor. Mine's hooked to a rio 400 and the ball valve throttles it to a point where the media "dances" about 2/3 of the way up the reactor (that description will make more sense once you have one set up).