Rust?

[Coral reefer]

I thought RowaPhos is just a brand of GFO. Maybe a good brand, perhaps one that doesn’t leach as much (no personal experience). But not chemically something different.

Yes I think that’s the case. I believe it has to do with the structure and size of it.

 

[Zero Gravitas]

OK I just ordered 500 ml of ROWAphos, got to go find my two little fishes reactor and clean it out, and hopefully find a pump of the right sort somewhere… Thank you for your help. I’ve been doing 15% water changes every other day… My water mixing station is only 20 gallons right now, I could take out a 55 gallon tank I have stored and change a larger portion at once. Would that be better?


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[RandyC]

I thought RowaPhos is just a brand of GFO. Maybe a good brand, perhaps one that doesn’t leach as much (no personal experience). But not chemically something different.

Technically (sorta) different. Rowaphos is Ferric Hydroxide and dry GFO is Ferric Oxide (or Ferric Oxide Hydroxide). When GFO hits water it will form Ferric Hydroxide.

I’m guessing the difference is the crystalline structure that is formed. GFO crystalline structure will be randomly formed when it hits the water and Rowaphos is probably a more unified structure they form in a lab and maintained because it’s ship wet.

 

[Zero Gravitas]

OK actually I had some of that brand sitting around…, Found it when I found the reactor again. Here it is set up, wish me luck.

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[ofzakaria]

OK actually I had some of that brand sitting around…, Found it when I found the reactor again. Here it is set up, wish me luck.

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Just keep watching your po4. This media is fast and effective. Make sure you do jist zero out the po4. You can control the speed by controlling flowrate. Rowaphos will remove al, and silica
You still need to use cuprisorb to remove cupper.
Then later if you still have iron you can use al99 which is an al based po4 remover that will remove ba and iron also... but only after rowaphos.

 

[JVU]

Just keep watching your po4. This media is fast and effective. Make sure you do jist zero out the po4. You can control the speed by controlling flowrate. Rowaphos will remove al, and silica
You still need to use cuprisorb to remove cupper.
Then later if you still have iron you can use al99 which is an al based po4 remover that will remove ba and iron also... but only after rowaphos.

For what it’s worth, Triton and others recommend the opposite order with the logic that Al99 can leach aluminum and GFO/RowaPhos remove that aluminum.

 

[ofzakaria]

How is that opposit to what I said?
I said rowaphos remove al and silica
Al99 remove ba and iron.
So when you want to remove silica and or al, you can use rowaphos
When you want to remove ba and or iron, you can use al99.

Both rowaphos and al99 are po4 removers.

On my tank jurnal I have more explanations and results about this topic and how i use these media if you are intersted in more details.

 

[ofzakaria]

.

 

[JVU]

You said (I bolded parts to show the order you are suggesting):

Rowaphos will remove al, and silica...
Then later if you still have iron you can use al99 which is an al based po4 remover that will remove ba and iron also... but only after rowaphos.

This is opposite order of what is suggested by others. That’s all I was saying. I don’t think it’s a big deal. Just that since you went out of your way to say the order was important yet is the opposite of what experts suggest, I’m pointing that out.

 

[ofzakaria]

You said (I bolded parts to show the order you are suggesting):

This is opposite order of what is suggested by others. That’s all I was saying. I don’t think it’s a big deal. Just that since you went out of your way to say the order was important yet is the opposite of what experts suggest, I’m pointing that out.

Oh got.
I was not referring to order here. I was pointing out that you should not use both at the same time. rowaphos and al99 both are po4 removers. So I meant only after you remove one media start with the other.
There is no order really, at the end of the day each media do something specific. Using it before or after will not matter..
I use rowaphos and al99 based on what I want to achieve or extract from the system.

Never saw Triton recommend an order. They will tell you to use rowaphos if u have silica or iron(as a recommendation to other gfo that might leach iron)
They will recommend al99 if they see ba...

Hope that clarify things more.

 

[ofzakaria]

My hammers have been receding, tried everything I could think of, eventually just settled into changing 10% every three days… Upon further investigation, today, I decided to open up my UV sterilizer, and looks like there was a bunch of rust in it… I cleaned most of it off. Here is a picture of some of it. Looks like rust right? My next question is what should I do now? I just changed my carbon, and added a little prime. Going to do another couple more water changes in the next couple days. How bad is rust? I could theoretically do a 75% water change. It seems all the rest of my corals are doing well.

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I highly recommend you check my tank jurnal and see how I dealt with my similar issue and the debugging progression. It will help you, you can see the icp tests and how each step did what.
Good luck

 

[bluprntguy]

I think a bag of cuprisorb is your best friend in this situation and probably well worth the $9.

 

[ofzakaria]

I think a bag of cuprisorb is your best friend in this situation and probably well worth the $9.

Cuprisorb did wonders in cupper. I kept it in my system for 3 months, because I think small metal particles went in the system and kept rusting slowly for a while.
I used it along side rowaphos, and then along side al99...
The 3 media's removed iron, cupper, silica, ba and al..

 

[Chromis]

Do you have a tank journal or can you share before-after photos of the receding hammers? How long have you had them? Have you added any new euphyllias lately?

 

[Zero Gravitas]

I do have a tank journal, I’ll try to link it if I can figure out how, that has some pictures of the hammers in what I’m now considering good health. But I didn’t take any pictures of them receded. Although it was only a couple heads that had retracted completely the rest were out, but just somewhat less bushy looking. Now that I have done five water changes, and run the GFO media, they have come out again. That is, the fully retracted ones. Going to test as many parameters as I can today. Got some of them in the mail. I will update.

Thank you


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[rygh]

The rust on that metal sheeting actually looks like rust deposits from something underneath.
A possible thought is that the stainless sheeting was reflecting, plus protecting steel/etc from salt water, and it leaked.
Poor quality stainless can certainly rust, but it usually looks more pitted.

I would strongly suggest discarding that sterilizer.

As far as iron - not sure what the big concern is.
Huge amounts would be bad, but trace is normal in seawater.
In fact, quite a few people add iron if they have algae scrubbers, because it gets too low.

A series of big water changes is always a good idea.

 

[ofzakaria]

The rust on that metal sheeting actually looks like rust deposits from something underneath.
A possible thought is that the stainless sheeting was reflecting, plus protecting steel/etc from salt water, and it leaked.
Poor quality stainless can certainly rust, but it usually looks more pitted.

I would strongly suggest discarding that sterilizer.

As far as iron - not sure what the big concern is.
Huge amounts would be bad, but trace is normal in seawater.
In fact, quite a few people add iron if they have algae scrubbers, because it gets too low.

A series of big water changes is always a good idea.

Iron level spike when you have heavy metal contaminates. Indeed iron is one of the trace elements so up to a certain level is not only ok rather useful. I dose iron weekly.
But
High iron will promot algae(chatos love iron).

Iron can be an indication of rust or heavy metal contaminant that's all. When I had my vectra issue,cupper and iron spiked. Cupper is much bigger issue ofcourse but high iron level is no fun either.
Since I do not see icp, I can only assume his iron spiked..just prediction...

Here is what an icp will say about iron. This is when I had a high iron.

Also u see how much it was and later after I corrected it how much it went down

The good news is that correcting iron will be a byproduct of using the po4 remover so we do not need to do something specifically to reduce iron.
Water changes and using po4 remover media will correct most of the heavy metal contaminates naturaly..