GFO packing too tight for water flow

wrfreeman · Mar 16, 2014

What causes GFO to get so tightly packed that no water will pass through it? I thought if you had the flow too high that would happen, but I had mine reasonable low I thought. Does it have to be just at a trickle to begin with? I'm using the regular BRS GFO.

SLUF681 · Mar 16, 2014

When I ran GFO, I adjusted my flow so that the GFO started tumbling gently.

Ole Man · Mar 17, 2014

I'm with Sluf ,I use the 250 TLF cyc. and about 1 1/2 cups of GFO mildly tumbleing it must do this continuously or it sets up like concrete plus it must run 24/7 you turn it off like over night its stuck.I run it 24/7 on my tank and change it out....every couple of months...if I get a rise in phosphates.Hope this helps Wade.

wrfreeman · Mar 17, 2014

Thanks guys. It was tumbling gently, but perhaps too gently because not it's not tumbling at all. The eater is getting though because I do have flow, but I can't see it tumble any more. I'm just about out of GFO so I may switch to ROWA Phos. I've heard some good things about it.

ryecoon · Mar 19, 2014

Sorry for side busting in this thread but i have the same question. Maybe you guys can take a look. So i just installed a MiniMax reactor for GFO. Looks like the bottom half is tumbling perfectly but the top half is tightly packed. Will this still work out or should a take some out? or even take it all out and put a new batch? Water seems to still flow thru the GFO but idk if the flow can be much better if it wasnt packed.

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Ole Man · Mar 19, 2014

To start with you have waaay to much GFO in there.They recommend a starting point of about 1 cup in the Two Little Fishes 550 reactor which is about 3 times larger than what your working with.I would empty yours out try 1/3 of that container of your reactor with GFO and get a good tumble to it,not real violient and you should be ok.This is just a suggestion

ryecoon · Mar 19, 2014

Ole Man said:
To start with you have waaay to much GFO in there.They recommend a starting point of about 1 cup in the Two Little Fishes 550 reactor which is about 3 times larger than what your working with.I would empty yours out try 1/3 of that container of your reactor with GFO and get a good tumble to it,not real violient and you should be ok.This is just a suggestion

That sounds much better. I made a mistake by trying to follow the Online GFO calculator because the minimax instructions did not specify the maximum amount for GFO in this reactor.