Bro,
I met you at the Madpetz the other day when you and your gf picked up the deltec skimmer. Hope you remember me. How is your deltec working so far?
For rowaphos, it only removes phosphate and silicate not heavy metal and chlorine.
If you want to know if it really works, the best way is use a quality PO4 test kit like Salifert or Hanna color meter to measure the input and output of your FR. You should see a drastic drop in PO4 reading. The output will not be zero reading unless your tank PO4 is very low. It will take a few pass for the rowaphos to pick up all the PO4 in the water.
Having said that, it also depends on whether you have anything in your tank leaching phosphate. If you have something generating phosphate (e.g. old DSB, rotten food, etc.) as fast as the rowaphos can absorb, you will not see any drop in the tank PO4.