Is it ok to run just carbon thru a phospate reactor ?
I don’t see why not- - what coud it hurt?
Yes no problem at all…Did it for years on my 75.
Thanks for the replies, just didn’t want to go ahead of myself. Better to check first then be sorry later. Filling the reactor right now.
Safe call asking. It will not only be fine, but I also highly recommend it. The media will receive move flow and water will reach every piece of the media more quickly. Make sure to replace or remove it after a months time or it will soon after begin to leach back in what it has absorbed.
You’ll likely want to adjust more flow to go through the reactor for carbon then you had going through for phopshate media. Just don’t let the pieces grind against each other or you’ll get a little black dust in your tank and they won’t be able to get much crud out of the tank. You can fill the reactor to the top with carbon without too much risk of massive channeling.
Happy reefing.
Don’t forget to bring those corals to the meeting. 
+1 on the yes, I run 3 weeks of carbon in my PolyReactor then a week of AO in it, rinse and repeat.
:BEER
[quote=“TimH07, post:6, topic:3329”]
+1 on the yes, I run 3 weeks of carbon in my PolyReactor then a week of AO in it, rinse and repeat.
:BEER[/quote]
scuze my lack opf abbreviatory terminology, but AO means???
Aluminum Oxide is what he is referring to. I believe these are the white beads you are using to extract phosphates.
Tim uses a lot of abbreviations I’ve noticed, lol. If your reading a lot on something in the middle of a paper/article they may something like “Aluminum Oxide(AO)” and then use “AO” in the rest of the paper. May not always easily translate in a hobby forum.
Sorry about that lol, yes aluminum oxide is what I meant, Phosguard by Seachem is the AO i use.
I think both Bill and Paul use that as well. I use it and like 3 others, lol. Ken gave me a couple samples of stuff in the past and I collected a whole bunch of stuff from conferences. Read about all of it and I really don’t think you can get a bad phosphate extractor if you’re buying something made to be used in the hobby.
I still think it is kind of a toss up between the two and you find experienced knowledgeable people that use either one. The aluminum oxide also is likely to channel less inside a reactor because of the same shape and size. The rust will absorb more per gram of media then the “AO” 
Toss up IMPO.
Its just easier to use for me, GFO would just blow out of my reactor.
Randy Holmes (I believe) did a study of weather or not the aluminum leaches out of AO over a period of time but he did a drastic scale of something like 500mg in 1 gallon of water for extended time (mythbusters prove the results tactics more than prove the method IMO)
Using 30mg in 130 gallons of water for me is no problem at all.
Sea chem has a lot of info on their site about the supposed myth of AO leaching and harming animals. Seemed pretty sound to me. Also the corals that were rumoured to be affected by this most significantly… never looked better in my tank since I started using it.