Equipment Room, or not?

Where is the media for the reactor??? You need to get that thing online....

I used a little plastic baby food jar to go around the float and to keep snails off it. If a large snail gets on the float it will cause switch to turn on/off with it's weight. Especially bad on a ATO.

 

Did not think of the baby food jar...I do have a plastic jar which bullion came in...a bit larger in dia, but it should do...the children have not brought grandkids back to the house so I'm short on baby food jars...

On to the Ca reactor...I'm waiting for BRS to get their pH probes in so I can start this thing up...in the mean time I'm dosing 2 part C-Balance, Mg, and buffer to get the parameters in band and ratios correct...

I will note, that once I started dosing Ca, the alk has been dropping. I'll keep adjusting the mix until I get it going back up again.

 

Can I get a little more info on this? How exactly is it put together.. Thanks

 

Sure,

All vertical PVC is 3" The bottom "T" is one of the Sweep style drain Ts which has more internal volume than a standard T. As the 55 gallon sump/tank is only 12 inches wide, I had to cut back the ends of the T, and the caps to get the total width to fit (I used my chop saw for this).
At the bottom of the T I drilled 20-1/2" holes, 45 deg. flared the outside of the holes and de-bured the inside and lip formed by the flare to get as smooth a transition as possible.

The connection points above are 1.5 inch drain adapters turned downward to facilitate the flow.

The top cap of the vertical 3" riser has 8-1/2 inch holes, also flared and de-bured, then I put a bit of floss into the cap and held it in place with a zip tie (I found there was some salt creep and gurgling with out the "muffler").

Here's a close up of the T:


This idea is not mine...I picked up the concept here on 3Reef...as a way to quiet the overflow return to the sump...

I like how well this is working and plan to make a 2" version to go into the refugium.

 

Hey, Thanks a lot! I think I will try something like this, my overflow is driving me nuts currently.. K+ my friend.

 

Here's the results from yesterday's chem check...



This evening alk is 10.9 dkh....making progress...this is about "in balance" with Ca at 310 & Mg at 875...time to start dosing 2 part with Mg supplement and get up to 450 Ca/1400 Mg/14 dkh...

The pH probe for the Ca reactor has been ordered...

This weekend's maintenance included a 10 gallon water change and replacing the GFO media as PO4 was detectable for the first time...

 

Observation...

Alk is now 12.8, pH drift is now 8.17 to 8.23....which is the smallest drift I have seen...

The Mg supplements arrived last night. I'll get that mixed and start working on Ca and Mg ratios...

The daitom, GHA, is beginning to fade as the clean up crew continues their mowing opperations....

 

If you want a place to keep your tank parameters then try Tank Profiler - fish tank monitoring made easy! You will have to get a hold of Ryan for a password. Easy place to create some graphs if you need them.

 

subscribed. great fish room build

 

Thanks.