DIY carbon reactor/filter

[davejnz]

Carbon filtration is a great way to provide water clarity as well as remove organics/chemicals from your water.There are 2 types of methods used,active or passive.Active filtration is when water is forced through the carbon,passive is when you just place a media bag full of carbon in a high flow area in your sump/tank.Passive filtration does work but it works real slow and its not nearly effective IMO as active filtration.After seeing all these "reactors" being sold online i decided to just make my own "carbon reactor".
MATERIALS:
1 inline RO chamber(the kind with the caps that screw off on the ends),1/4" ID tubing,carbon,media bag(optional).
The design is very simple,after rinsing the carbon,place it in a media bag(optional,makes removeing it easier and in theory should keep the carbon from trapping particulates).Then place the bag in the inline RO chamber.Measure out a piece of tubing from your overflow to where the chamber will sit at in your sump then cut.Place one end of the tubeing in your overflow,start a siphon and insert the other end of the tubeing into the top of the RO chamber.In my design,i removed the RO fittings so it would have more flow but you could just as easy keep them and use RO tubeing instead of vinyl tubeing.

[dakar]

Good DIY David! Bet you get a lot of protiens and crud from the surface skimmer collected at the media bad. Is that just a standard ol' media bag?

I could see a smallish (80gph or so) powerhead attached to one end and tossed into the sump to really make it effective as well.

[davejnz]

Indeed Dave,I might just go ahead and do the powerhead addition but i was trying to make this as simple and cheap as possible.Actually,the tubeing is under
the water level in the overflow so there shouldn't be any surface scum making its way down.Thanks for the suggestions,I might just remove the intake to a different location.So far,its working great.I actually am glad i decided to not go with the RO fittings because the excess flow that the chamber cannot handle back floods up into where i inserted the tubeing at(I havn't glued it yet)probably won't either.

[Reptoreef]

the DIY phosban reactor is what I use... works really well.

[davejnz]

Update,the filtr/screening that comes in the ends of these chamber should be removed.After reading Dakar's post,I decided i'd take a look and see if i was getting any crud/parrticulates in the chamber.Sure enough,the filter floss material that is on each end of the caps was already brown.It's a PITA to remove,its really glued into the cap well.There's a grey plastic circular ring that needs to be removed before you can access the filter material.I just used some needle-nose cutters and cut it out.The filter material is not at all easy to remove.After struggling for 10 mins with various knives/tools,I finally just took a razor blade(a scalpel would be idea)and cut the filter at the plastic where it was glued down.
RESULTS-the flow is much better now and it is no longer back flooding out the intake.I'd recommend useing the filter bag this way as without it,the carbon might find its way out of the chamber.
Dave,the media bag i used is a 10"x3" draw string type media bag.It can probably hold about 2 cups of carbon,I just used about a cup.
CAUTION-for those of you who have never used carbon filtration before,you should start out with very small amounts.Say 1tblsp per 20gal,it is very effective at removing those yellowing agents in the water and when used aggresively/first time,the dramatic increase in water clarity might bleach your corals.