There's a couple of guys that really push the aluminum oxide (the white balls/pellets) as a 'quick fix'. I used it when I was bringing my high phosphates down, and I think it was a big contributor to the dino problem I eventually had.
Here's my numbers. On June 22nd I was reading .78 PPM phosphate in the tank. I added seachem on june 23rd under advice of one of our esteemed lfs people. There was a steady decline of PO4. The second of July I was reading .19 and I switched out the seachem and switched to ROWA. It dropped to .16 by the 13th at which time I switched to BRS GFO. By the 24th I was at .05 and have hovered around there ever since. Judging solely by my results (all this was run through a TLF phosban reactor), the seachem worked, but too quickly, the ROWA wasn't overly effective, and the hi-cap was the best long term performer. For all of this I tested with both a salifert and a hanna checker. The hanna isn't perfect, but the salifert is open to interpretation as well, but they were both close enough to each other, and I would do 1 salifert test and 2 hanna tests just to be sure.
Just for me, I like the BRS stuff because you don't have to worry if you leave it in a little too long, and I have had no big spikes since July 28th. I just tested and I got a reading of .03 (which can be actually .00-.07). In fact the only time the phosphate crept up, was when I battled dinoflagellates and turned off the GFO, it crept back up to .12 (some guys were adding phosphate as a possible 'cure' to dinos). Since I haven't had anything like that since, I do attribute that battle to changing my water parameters too quickly. In fact during that period my nitrates spiked to 50 ppm, and they had been undectable before.
I guess what I'm saying in a really long drawn out way, was I really don't like seachem PhosGard, and I do question the effectiveness of ROWA. If I was going to 'fix' a neglected tank again, I would run a cup of BRS hi-cap in a reactor, and swap it out weekly, until my numbers hit .05PPM No more quick fixes for me ever again. Slow and steady, and LOTS of testing. ;D