testing the effectiveness of your media

[picoreefguy]

well i was doing some tank maintainence just now and changed out my reactor media since it had been in there for about 2 weeks. i wanted to test to see how effective phosguard was so i checked the water from the tank and it read 0.10 ppm with a hanna checker not terrible but not ideal either. after that i checked the water fresh out of the reactor and it read 0.05 so i guess its doing its job although i was kind of hoping that the water out of the reactor would read 0.00. i dont know if thats a result of the water going through too fast or if my expectations are just too high. i may check again after i slow the pump down to allow more contact time.

i was wondering if anyone else has done this with any other media and with any other test? also do you ever test your newly made saltwater. i have never really thought to test new salt water beyond temp and salinity but i think next time i make a batch im going to test other parameters including calcium alk and phosphate.

 

[myvwrock]

I would say lowering it slower might be better. Less shock on the system?

You said the was new water? What's your fresh ro water reading at the ro system?

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[tbub1221]

I run a diy recirculating biopellet reactor it returns approximately 4 drops per second , it's very aggressive and strip the water pretty clean but I don't have a hannah p04 to compare before and after.
my low range test is too difficult to tell

 

[FutureInterest]

I think removing 50% of the phosphates is pretty good. It's definitely an interesting test that you're running. I'm glad you're going to test further by lowering your flow rate. I'm also very curious as to what would happen if you increased your flow rate as well... Please update us when you can .

 

[picoreefguy]

hey guys sorry i havent updated this thread in a while im a few days late on my reactor media change and am just now getting to it. so i ran the experiment again and the results were interesting, i would assume that cutting the flow by about half that you would get double the contact time and thus twice the phosphate removal ability but thats not what happened. instead it only dropped the number slightly, only a 23% decrease in phosphate. but whats more interesting is that my control showed up much lower than either of the reactor results so im thinking that since im running a dual reactor which has matrix in the first chamber maybe the matrix has some junk built up in it. the old media did look pretty nasty when i took it out so ill try taking the matrix out and rinsing it some new saltwater and run the test again. another idea is that maybe the carbon that i run with the phosguard could be putting out phosphate, unlikely but its possible. ill just have to run the phosguard by itself to get the most accurate results. but thats a project for another day. im already home and ive used up all my saltwater on a water change so ill do that next time and update again. also jin the only pump i have at the moment that can pump faster than the one im using is my return pump and i dont feel like unplumbing it to run the test lol.

results:
control .06 direct from the tank
full flow .13 out of the reactor after a media change
half flow .1 out of the reactor after a media change