BRS GFO making water cloudy, turbo snails dying

[Turtle]

Bought a new GFO Dual reactor from BRS and some GFO. Worked well for about 2 weeks then it started making the water cloudy and started developing brown sludge in the skimmer and tank.
Changed the GFO and carbon and the water got cloudy.
Shut off the GFO and the water cleared in an hour or so.
Several (4 of 7) Mexican turbo snails are now dead or dying. They have been falling off the glass for a few weeks now, since I added the GFO reactor.
Also running Bio Pellets.

Is anyone else having any problems with BRS GFO?
I have some older GFo from a year ago and some newer GFo from a month ago, bothe are causing the same problem. Tank clouds up quickly when starting the GFO unit up again.
I am also having some low ph from the air conditioners keeping the house closed up, PH is 7.9 to 8.1 RANGE.
ALK IS 16 DK
SALINITY IS .26 TO .26
Phosphates are .1
calcium is 480
mag is 1500
Tank has been running fine for over a year, corals seem to be doing well.

What is going on??

[ScottCRRT]

Not sure exactly what is going on. But, I use the High Capacity GFO from BRS exclusively and love it. Before that I used phosban and never had a problem.

Couple of questions, are you rinsing the GFO before adding it to the reactor? I always rinse mine in a mesh colander (sp.), or in a filter sock.

Are you running the flow to the reactor so that the GFO has a "slight tumble" to the surface, or is it just blowing around like crazy?

May also want to check to make sure you have the input of water meeting the GFO first, and then running through the charcoal.

Hope this may help.

[katymunoz]

I agree with the above, are you rinsing the gfo really well before putting it in?

[1CARPENTER]

Also with the bio-pellets if you just started using them you need to add a little every couple days untill you get the amount needed in the reactor! If you add all at once it can cause bad things to happen!

[weimers75]

I had the same problem....after lots of research it came down to too much too fast. Reduce the amount of gfo and then gradually increase. If you google gfo and cloudy water you'll see its not uncommon.

[firsttime]

Originally Posted by weimers75

I had the same problem....after lots of research it came down to too much too fast. Reduce the amount of gfo and then gradually increase. If you google gfo and cloudy water you'll see its not uncommon.

+1 this is most likely the cause.

[NewBostonConst]

I slowed the water speed on my gfo to get the cloudy water to go away.

[mf2055]

you might have had a large population of bacteria living off the bio pellet reactor that needed the phosphate in the water to keep on living.... take away all phosphate with GFO and they all die in quick order. Look up redfield ratio:

Redfield ratio - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Redfield_ratio

[Turtle]

I turned off the GFO for a day, then turned the flow on it way down when turning it on last night. The water was clear this morning. One of the Turbo snails looks to be recovering. The snails may not be related to the GFO problem.
I did not rinse the GFO before putting it into the reactor. I turned on the pump and ran the water into a bucket to rinse as I saw on the BRS video. I think I will rinse better next time so that it does not clog up the foam pads with fines and dust.

[weimers75]

Don't turn the flow all the way down - the gfo will solidify and you'll have to throw it out. What I meant was to remove a portion of the gfo (use less).

[immokalee98]

I was having this same issue and I removed the GFO from my single reactor and put it back in the dual and put carbon in the single. I'm running two carbons now and it cleared up quickly.