Got me a new toy....Ca reactor

[ereefic]

Ahhhh, the days of filling a Kalk dripper every day or two are soon behind me. I aquired this baby in a trade with a friend of mine. Just ordered a controller today and should have this baby running later next week. :-D

[dakar]

Cool toy, something tells me the other end of the trade musta have been pretty dang good as well :D

Just out of curiosity, any idea how long a tank of CO2 lasts in a reactor? Looks like a 5lb bottle, hopefully lasts long enough not buy the fella at Badger Gas a new caddy every couple of years....

[ereefic]

Not sure how long it's going to last, guess it kinda depends on the demand of the system. $10 to fill it, so not too bad. And yeah, it's a 5 lb. bottle.

[Reptoreef]

About a year or 2 on average for a 5lb bottle. Nice reactor... enjoy the dial-in period.

[condiman]

ereefic i know the felling about the kaulk drip. Maybe one day I will also invest in one of those

[Reptoreef]

Ereefic, You getting dialed in, yet?

[ereefic]

No, the pH controller won't be here till tuesday, so should have it going by the weekend.

[Reptoreef]

I'm assuming all you will have to do is plug and play then... so, you're all plumbed in?

[ereefic]

Yeah, it's pretty much ready to go considering there isn't much 'plumbing' to do really.

[ereefic]

It's up and running. My tank pH has me a little baffled though.

After calibrating the pH controller, the tank pH was at 8.0 about 3 hours into the lighting cycle (5 if you include the actinics). Alk. was 8.6 dkh. I buffered up my Alk. to 10.6 and the pH went to 8.1 and held there till about 1 hour after the MH's went off (actinics still on).

Right now the reactor effluent is 40 DPM with 10 BPM. pH of the effluent is 6.8 and Alk. of the effluent is 18.6 dkh. Going to run it like that over night and adjust tomorrow.

[Reefmaniac1]

Nice toy. Eric, WTF do you do for a living? I mean Jeez...you have a reef tank, a clam tank and now a calcium reactor:)

[bjpembo]

pretty nice toy. what'd you have to trade for it? did you get that link i sent to you about dialing it in? it was much easier to follow that than the directions that came with mine from mrc. what type of control valve do you have for the effluent going to the tank?

[ereefic]

Nice toy. Eric, WTH do you do for a living? I mean Jeez...you have a reef tank, a clam tank and now a calcium reactor:)

Don't forget the SPS tank. ;)

The calcium reactor set-up really didn't cost me anything. I got that threw a trade. :)

[ereefic]

pretty nice toy. what'd you have to trade for it? did you get that link i sent to you about dialing it in? it was much easier to follow that than the directions that came with mine from mrc. what type of control valve do you have for the effluent going to the tank?

I traded some tanks, overflow, pump, some frags. :)

I did get that link, thanks. A fellow on RC pretty much walked me through the dialing in process, made it a breeze.

I ran RO tubing from the 2 outputs and used JG valves on them. They have kept consistant drip rates. An Aqualifter pump is feeding the reactor and working nicely.

[bjpembo]

my fitting is a jg valve too, i said needle valve earlier but it is a jg. my flow is inconsistent for some reason. havent figured that out yet. i feed it with a maxijet maybe i should check that pump out and see if theres some problem with it. seems to be the dial on the valve though, as i can just barely touch it and it'll drip, and at last check its not clogged and i just replaced the ro tubing.

[ereefic]

One thing I really like about this reactor is there are 2 effluent outputs.

One comes right out of the lid (#1) and the other comes off of the circulation pump output (#2). I was running it with only #2 open and #1 closed and I was getting a big air bubble in the top of the reactor. I then opened #1 just to a couple of drips per minute but it would stop after about 24 hrs. I then cut back the drip rate from #2 and opened up #1 more, to still have the same drip rate from the 2 outputs, but both are consistant now.

Those JG valves seem to work crummy for a really slow drip rate, but there working good with a higher drip rate.

[bjpembo]

any of anything to replace them with?

[bjpembo]

umm, that should be know of anything to replace them with.....

[ereefic]

These have been recommended by several people, but I wasn't willing to pay the price.

http://www.aquaticeco.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/product.detail/iid/8317/cid/2120

[bjpembo]

that looks kinda like whats on mine now, cept it threads into the cap and has a slip fitting for ro tubing on the ouput side.

[ereefic]

Hmm, not sure what to tell you then BJ. Perhaps your feed pump (in some way or another) isn't keeping a constant pressure inside the reactor allowing for a consistant drip.

Check out the MRC thread on RC, see if you can get some answers there.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=344802

[bjpembo]

i shot andy an email earlier, hopefully he has some good, simple answer for me. so we'll see, in the meantime, thanks for the link i'll be browsing through.