Phosphate Levels Not Going down.

it could be leaching out of the rock

 

What food are you feeding with?

 

it's hard to say, if it is comming from the rocks theres no telling how much is in the rocks. Could be comming from the sand (if there is any) could be comming from a large amount of different places. Hows your water testing, if you can cut off the fuel supply it will help cut down on the algae. It took me around 5 months to get rid of my hair algae this last fall. Once I changed my feeding schedule, up'd the flow, and did about 3 buckets worth of water changes I finally beat it.

 

There is no timetable for how long PO4 can take to leave your rock/sand, just stick with your current plan of GFO, swapping it out as you get a reading from the reactor. Do you blow out anything from your rocks?

 

How about trying a different test kit?

 

Even though using the turkey baster makes the tank look bad it is worth it. Everything should filter or settle in an hour or two. Usually after I blow everything around and it settles my tank looks better. I also have 2 powerheads that just blow behind rocks to help keep stuff from settling. As far as the phosphates I would keep doing water changes. The only thing that may help you is time, sometimes these things just need to run their course.

 

Have you tested the water coming out of your GFO reactor? Do you rinse your test tubes in DI water before testing your water? I used to just rinse my tubes in tap water and then use them for testing once they dried. My numbers were all over the place so then I started rinsing the tubes with DI before testing and my results are much more consistent.

 

not sure if this would make a difference or not but even bulk reef supply recomends using two single units for the media reactors becuase when you run the GFO/carbon in the dual, over a small amount of time the carbon causes the pressure to slow down maybe making the GFO less efficient. Just a thought I dont know.