help: CA reactor people

Lee- I dont completely understand the question/problem. If you have air bubbles coming out the effluent line, open up the effluent needle valve for a few hours, it will purge all the air and debris. Then dial it back to yourr desired level. regarding the pump, are you talking feed or recirc? In general, a larger recirc pump will make for a better reactor, within reason. You dont want to overdrive it, and counteract the feed pump.
 
Make sure the CO2 that is going into the reaction chamber are being feed directly to the pump and they are not clogged. You will occasionally hear it actually, that is if your pump is quiet.
 
Jeremy is right. Sometimes you have to have the effluent line wide open to purge all the air. Have the co2 off during this time.

If your bubble count is higher than your effluent drip, then you can have too much co2 in the chamber which can accumulate as one large bubble. If this bubble gets trped inside the recirc pump, you can have noise and poor performance.

These things are tricky to get dialed in and can take forever; once dialed in though, you're good to go.

Btw, the coarse media is far superior than the fine media. It's easier for the recirc pump to flow throught the media.

I use a blueline 20 b/c my reactor is huge. You mag 2 should be fine.
 
Ok lets see if I can fill in some gaps here. I have the bubbles sitting at 68 bpm as of last night, nothing too crazy there. The reactor is sitting at 6.8pH and I highly doubt it ever shut off last night. Is that bad, or do some reactor go all the time? Even yet it never hit 6.5 in the chamber I can bet so technically it's not doing anything. The air that was in the 2nd chamber is no longer there, I switched the needle valve to the exit line. I'm thinking that air was there because I had the needle valve before the reactors and it was dialed down, the exit point on the second chamber is not on top its more on the side a few inches down from the top, so I'm thinking it didnt have enough water pressure going inside to fill that last part up. In any rate, it's not there anymore and no bubbles are in the line anymore. The recirc pump is noisy as hell and I can't stand it. I'm going to rip this thing apart today and try to see what the problem is. As far as I know, there is no media in there and the impeller is brand new. It doesnt sound like a erratic sounds, it's constant annoyance. Man I HATE MAG drives. I mean, they are awesome pumps but for being so basic so much crap happen to them. Alright so the drip rate, will that directly effect the pH in the reactor?
 
2 things affect the pH, the drip rate and the bubble count. They are coupled also. If your pH is to high you eihter need to increase the bubble count or decrease the drip rate (doing either will mean relatively more CO2 in the chambers therefore lowering pH)

I've also found restricting the input has caused me issues before so I only restrict the output. That should dramatically help you air bubble issues
 
One simple thing to check. When i first set mine up the ph controller had to be recalibrated two days after it was first calibrated. I had very similar issues this was the problem.

It may seem like a pian now but I love mine after the intial setup.

Good luck

Joe
 
kwl1763;152911 wrote: 2 things affect the pH, the drip rate and the bubble count. They are coupled also. If your pH is to high you eihter need to increase the bubble count or decrease the drip rate (doing either will mean relatively more CO2 in the chambers therefore lowering pH)

I've also found restricting the input has caused me issues before so I only restrict the output. That should dramatically help you air bubble issues
Click to expand...

Completely agree. Lee, your pH is measured at the primary chamber, right? Not as it exits the secondary. A pH of 6.8 after the second chamber would be bad. It should probably be no lower than 6.9. You should aim for your pH in the primary to be no lower than 6.5.

To comment a little more, increasing the bubbles will increase the alk, as will decreasing the effluent rate.
 
kwl1763;152911 wrote: 2 things affect the pH, the drip rate and the bubble count. They are coupled also. If your pH is to high you eihter need to increase the bubble count or decrease the drip rate (doing either will mean relatively more CO2 in the chambers therefore lowering pH)

I've also found restricting the input has caused me issues before so I only restrict the output. That should dramatically help you air bubble issues
Click to expand...

Yeah I switched to restricting the output and that solved the bubble issue.
 
If you have a ph controller you just need to have one bubble every 1-2 seconds and it will control the soleniod. Bubble rate really doesn't matter.
 
I've personally been using a calcium reactor for years and never have controlled the pH in the chamber. My bubble rate is super fast now but so is my drip rate but I have a huge tank packed with SPS. You'll just have to expierement to get it right. you shouldn't need much more then 1 per second n that size tank I wouldn't guess.
 
I guess I don't follow now. So if you don't pay attention to pH in the reactor how do you know when it's properly dissolving the media? If I ran the reactor I have at 1 bubble per second, so 60 bubbles per minute my pH inside the reactor would be 6.9-7.2 then again I guess that largely depends on the drip rate then? So at 1 bubble per second do you have your drip rate really slow?
 
Well when dialing it in I tested the output for a 30 or so dKh and I know I'm good. Once you dial it in, your good for months on end!
 
Yeah last I tested my dkh was 40. I know I needed to turn it down when I saw that. I adjusted a little bit so I guess we'll see what it's reading when i get home.
 
The goal is to get the dkh as high as possible without turning the media into mush. the new coarse media is much more foregiving and you can probably run 40 as long as it doesn't cause cavitation of the recirc pump. If you're on a pH controller and still getting 40 then that should be fine.
 
well then...guess I'm doing alright according to you. This morning was the first time I've noticed my pH controller shut off at the 6.5 mark. Ever since then, it was running constantly till I dialed in the most recent changes. Before then I couldn't get the pH to that 6.5 mark. Guess we'll see what I have when I go home.
 
remember that calcium levels will rise relatively slowly. when you change the drip rate/bubble count, test your calcium levels every 3-4 hours or so to see how the levels are changing.

once you can get your calcium level to stabilize at 420-450 ppm, then you can set it and forget it.

that is until the corals start growing out of control. :D

RK mag has a nice article on how to use your calcium reactor:

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-05/sh/feature/index.php">http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-05/sh/feature/index.php</a>

read the portion about fine tuning. i ran a reactor for 3 months without really knowing how it works...
 
to be honest, i really don't feel like i need to check my calcium levels. my halimeda plant tells me when the levels are falling.

if the new growth is "white", i'll add mag to increase calcium saturation. dosing kalk, i know mg levels are constantly falling...
 
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