Phosban and Carbon Question

So I am new to this and this read as much as possible and determine what's the "best" approach in a hobby with many "gray" area and opinions.

I have a 55 DT, 40 sump. Roughly 75lbs of LR. Refugium with Chaeto. Octo-XP-2000 skimmer.

As I am learning, I have made some mistakes. Conditioned Tap Water to start out versus RO/DI for example. I have since bought an RO/DI unit and will be using RO/DI from here forward. I've quite a bit of green hair algae starting out. I also have GARF grunge and a CUC on the way. It should CUC should arrive today, grunge on Monday.

I am concerned about phosphates and everything else that I inadvertently added to the tank using tap water.

I was thinking of getting a Two Little Fishes Phosban Reactor and running some Phosban and GAC. I seemed to make sense to have some chemical filtration long term as well and not only do biological filtration.

What are others doing and does adding this to my system make sense??

Thanks
Mark

 

I prefer to run both.

Carbon: will keep chemical warfare between corals to a minimum.

GFO: I keep mostly SPS corals and any amount of phosphates hurt them. I would rather pay the extra for something I don't need then not have it if I do.

 

I run carbon. Most folks do, and the benefits are known. There are plenty of articles on the web about activated carbon, what types and how it is made. Personally, I run BRS ROX .8. I do not think there is any better for our application, but it's small size is sort of a PITA and clogs easily. Try to get it some clean water from the skimmer.

The best way to run carbon is in a reactor. So get a 2 fishes or a BRS reactor. Both are the same amount and accomplish the same job. I think the BRS one is much nicer though.

I run carbon all the time, but it isn't necessary 365. So now I started running GFO. You can run them together, but mine is not big enough for what I need, flow is reduced with both, and they have different depletion rates. So some people do run them at the same time in the same reactor, but I don't think I will. I just lessened the amount of GFO and run it for about a month. Change out for some carbon, normal amount, and run it for about 2 weeks. I'll see haw that works for me.

You can always get two reactors and be done with it. Right now I don't have the space for two in the sump, and don't have the motivation right now to mount two on the wall and work that out. I will at some point though.

 

Get two reactors.
I always run carbon and GFO.

 

I followed Powerman's advice and bought the BRS.

Dual BRS GFO and Carbon Reactor - English

Thanks
M

 

Very nice. I have been eyeing one of those.

 

Can't go wrong there.