Faulty RO unit - Problems with algae

S

sinder255248

AC Members
Oct 11, 2005
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Faulty RO unit - Is my tank doomed?

Hi,

I've been running my tank for about 3 months now and I've always had a problem with algae, but just assumed that this was due to it being a new tank. Anyway I took my water in for a full test and it showed that phosphates were off the chart. I bought a test kit and tested the water supply at home, and sure enough phosphates were present. So I then tested the output from my RO unit, and to my surprise the phosphates were off the chart. Anyway to cut a long story short I took the unit in to the shop and it turns out that the pipes are the wrong way around, the instructions say that green should be waste and blue is the good stuff. The manufacturer has some how switched the green and the blue, which means that I've been putting wastewater into my tank. My question is, what problems is this likely to cause, and how can I correct this?

I have the following in my tank:

Yellow Tang
Blue Tang
2 Common Clowns
Yellow Tailed Damsel
Boxing Shrimp
Various snails and hermits

Tank is a 260L bow front, and water parameters are Ammonia = 0, Nitrates = 5, Nitrites = 0, Phosphates = 3+.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks

Brian
 
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Wow, that is perverse. Concentrating all the bad stuff and putting it into your tank. At least the carbon prefilter took out some of it.

None of your livestock are in immediate danger, but it can't be good to sit in that much phosphate. Plus, the wastewater will potentially have a lot of other compounds you don't want in your tank.

The simplest way is to do a few water changes a week to slowly bring it down. To speed things up, use an iron-based phosphate remover like Phosban or RowaPhos. Alumina-based products also work, but irritate corals and I have no idea of their effects on fish and mobile inverts.

I recently learned that RO systems, even when hooked up correctly, aren't very good at removing phosphate. Having a DI cartridge helps.

What is the phosphate level coming out of the unit now that it's fixed?
 
now that is a problem! wow, i'm suprised that the water doesn't have nitrates in it... if it has that much phosphates.
 
Reply

Phosphates are 0.25 now that it's fixed which is a lot better since it was 3+ in the waste. I was thinking about getting the addon DI for my unit. Will start doing the water changes when the vat is full tomorrow, how much would you recommend changing in one go? I did a 25% change on Thur 8th before realising that the RO was dodgy. LFS said I can take as much RO water as I want from them for free, and they're looking into why it happened and the potential reimbursment for salt/rawphos etc that I'll be using to fix the problem.

Thanks for the advice.
 
Well, 0.25 is a whole lot better, but still not optimum. 25% is a pretty good change, and I would change water as often as you feel like it until the PO4 gets down.

At least your LFS is being cool about it.
 
Wow, good luck buddy.

that can hurt when you've dished out so much money on a Saltwater set-up.

Ive ordered an R/O unit as well, and i'll be sure to check out the filter connection twice!! LOL!

Good luck.
 
it should be easy to tell if your using waste water or not... it takes A LOT longer to get a gallon clean water than it does waste water. Think about how many gpd your unit is and make sure it doesn't take an hours to get 5gallons of water out of a 35gpd unit or antyhing.
 
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