Blog Archives
Bulk Reef Supply (BRS) Granular Ferric Oxide (GFO)
Granular Ferric Oxide (GFO) is a phosphate remover commonly used in the saltwater aquarium industry. I am installing a GFO reactor on my system to help keep down nuisance green hair algae. I picked this BRS dual GFO/carbon reactor and GFO media up from my local fish store. A single canister reactor is supposed to support up to 120 gallons so I’m hoping the dual canister will help put a dent in the 400ish gallons in my system. Like they say “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

After hooking up a feed pump and adding the GFO media we are about ready to go! It’s important to run 5 or so gallons through the reactor to wash off the new media.

After the rinsing you want to set the flow high enough to slowly tumble the media. Turning to flow up too high will cause the GFO media to break down a bit and end up in your tank.
Don’t Overfill Your RO DI Resin Filters!
I was changing my Bulk Reef Supply (BRS) RO DI resin here a bit ago and couldn’t get the filter out of the canister. Â Looks like I put too much resin into the filter and is swelled up! I had to take a screw driver to the bottom of the filter to get the resin out. Lesson learned.
BRS 75 GPD RO/DI 6 Stage System
My Bulk Reef Supply 75 GPD RO/DI system showed up the end of last week. Â I was amazed at how well packed it was! Â Everything was pretty much plug-n-play. Â Took a couple minutes to drain and disconnect my old Kent Maxxima RO/DI and a few more to mount and get the new one running. Here are a few pictures from the switch out.
- Green Peanuts!
- What are these heavy bubble wrapped items? It’s like Christmas!
- BRS 75 GPD RO/DI 6 Stage *DELUXE* System – Components
- BRS Dual DI stage with refillable cartridges and Dual TDS Meter
- My old RO/DI – Kent Maxxima 35 GPD
- All set up.
- TDS Meter on top of DI unit.
- HM Dual TDS Meter
- First 4 stages (RO) of the 6
- Label.
- HM Filter Monitor that sits on top of the RO unit. Not sure that I will really find a use for this gadget.
- Draining old RO Water in the basement down my silicone path.
Reef Tank Dosing Containers – Revised
So I’ve been dosing Bulk Reef Supply (BRS) additives to my reef tank for about a year (1st Dosing post). There is one place that I messed up! The water containers that I used to dose my calcium, alkalinity and magnesium solution didn’t “cut the mustard.” Specifically, the alkalinity solution didn’t like the containers and found a way to crack the container and leak, twice. The first time it leaked I wrote it off as my mistake and replace the container with a new one, but I placed a short plastic shoe/boot mat under the containers for future spills 🙂 . The other night I looked in and noticed that the plastic shoe/boot mat was full of solution and getting ready to spill over. Luckily it was a small crack, or slow leak, and I was able to catch it. I think I am going to switch to plastic gas cans. Anything that’s made to handle hazardous liquids like gas should be able to handle alkalinity solution, right? The water containers are made out of pretty hard plastic so I think a more forgiving plastic will be better.
I’ve also realized that it’s easier to make a gallon of solution and add it to the five gallon (or whatever size) container as you go rather than make five gallons at a time (duh). So I’m stuck with 1 gallon containers for a little bit until I get new ones.
Bulk Reef Supply (BRS) Dosing Pumps
With my last bulkreefsupply.com order I got another dosing pump (BRS 2 Part Doser – 1.1 mL Per Minute) for dosing my magnesium solution (left). I’ve been pretty happy with the previous two dosing pumps I bought from BRS for dosing calcium & alkalinity solution (right). Here’s how I set them up under my 90 gallon refugium. (update at the bottom)
I first tried using 3 gallon containers (below) but soon upgraded to 5 gallon for calcium and alkalinity (soda ash) and 1 gallon for magnesium.