No Luck with LPS corals.

That is a very short change schedule for your carbon and gfo. More than likely you may not be rinsing the carbon well enough and changing it that frequently causes a lot of carbon fines to be in your tank. Carbon generally only needs to be replaced monthly if not longer between changes.

 

See that's contrary to what I've heard from others.
2 weeks for Carbon 1 month for GFO.

 

It depends on how much you're running. If you are running 1/2 the recommended amount you could change it biweekly, if you're running the full dose you can change it monthly. Personally I wouldn't change it more often than monthly as all it does is scrub the water.

Doing a lot of carbon changes can be very bad for your system if you do not have a meticulous cleaning regimen of the carbon before putting it in your tank. Even if you wash it meticulously carbon is pretty fragile especially if you use the softer carbon it's very easy to crumble with just moving it around.

By doing frequent changes of the carbon you don't allow your filtration system to pull those fines out of the water before introducing more to the system.

 

Forgot the gfo part. Monthly on gfo as well isn't necessary either. It's dependant on load. If your tank naturally has low phosphates it takes less gfo to pull it from the water column and thus gets used less frequently. What is advisable is to put your gfo in and every week test for phosphates, once you see them start to register then you have your time frame for replacement for the future.

So if you put you gfo in and don't read phosphates until week 7 then you know a 6 week change schedule is all you need.

 

Stupid phone submitted it before I was done.

You said you are running the carbon and gfo in a reactor, are they in the same chamber? If so that can lead to problems too as gfo needs more flow than carbin does.

If you have your carbon tumbling that is bad as it can cause the carbon to break up and release more fines into the water column. Carbon should have a gentle flow through it where the carbon doesn't move at all and the gfo should have tumbling type flow through it.

 

They are in the same chamber.

The GFO is on the bottom so it gets the most flow.
Then there is a sponge separating the GFO from the carbon, also slows down the flow some, but the Carbon is packed between 2 sponges so there is not much room for it to tumble.

It does not tumble though.