Phosphates, how fast do they go down

Well, For the 1st time in a long time, I had a few fish "check out" and go live somwhere else. most of my parms where OK, but then I noticed I have never been testing for Phosphates. I picked up a test kit.. and ouch, they were high.

I did a partial water change, I installed a phos-ban reactor and that's "doing it's thing".

Realizing that all thigns are relative.. how fast does one of those reactors drop the phosphate level? The tank is a bit over 200G, the flow through the reactor is adjusted pretty good (not too fast, not too slow). Can the reactor fix my issue ( if so, any experiance on how long it will take) or should I water change the heck out of the tank until the phos' are gone?

 

PO4 with a good reactor and media such as GFO can decrease fairly rapidly. If you are looking for an exact time frame I can't help you with that but I can tell you that if you maintain the water changes, check for detritus around rocks or in them and feed less, the levels should drop pretty quickly, as long as you have the appropriate amount of GFO in the reactor and aren't adding to the problem with poor source water or overfeeding!!

Happy cleaning!

 

Where do you get your water? If you're buying RO water from the store or something then the phosphate will continue. If you're making your own RO/DI I'd check the levels there too.