chimera

Steve, Im experiencing exactly how you have described your dilemma with your reactor. I'm running a Korralin C3001. I actually considered upgrading the pump on it to something gruntier. Wasp, thanks for the tips, I'll give some of those a try. Still, I think its just one of those things and the outlet will need unclogging regularly. Alternative is probably a much higher drip and bubble count combined with a gruntier circulation pump to turn the water over within the reactor more often (which should mean the injected CO2 should pass over the media more often too breaking it down faster to counteract the faster drip rate) In theory anyway. Problem I have now is my pH monitor is broken so I cant test the pH of the effluent :roll:

bizzare but so true, I noticed exactly the same with mine when i was looking at them (well, glanced at them ) tonight. wonder why that is? maybe just the specific brand of bulb or is it coz its 14k? i'd go for 10k and supplement with blue T5's. btw, you havent mentioned how old your tank is etc. has it cycled yet? have you tested for nitrates/phosphates? how old are your current bulbs? good calcium levels are best for fast coral growth

enhance, enhance, enhance... i hate it when they do that in the movies! what a crock of @#$!@#!!!

i've gone with 1 x 10k m/h, 2 x 14k m/h's, 2 x white T5's and 2 x blue T5's. pretty much a combo of all sorts, but i think its just the right colour

6500 is certainly the best growth, but too yellow for my liking (hence why reef says heaps of blues)

they are both only opinions after all, and to layton's credit that is exactly how he stated it. each to their own i guess

water goes in the top, although the circulation pump takes that water and pushes it from the bottom up. thats why the impellor screwed out last time, it was trying to pump water down and back up yet the media pad at the bottom of the reactor was clogged so it go a bit of back pressure causing the wear on the impellor. dumb design really. i think there would be much smarter ways of doing it

yes and no. at first yes, but after a while dissolved media (that doesnt escape as effluent) has a tendency, with a bit of assistance from our friend gravity, to drop to the bottom of the chamber causing the clogging. i noticed this moreso with an increase in the bubble rate (go figure) but at a lower bubble rate, it didnt break down enough. catch-22.

speechless... i agree with ya TM, well on par with steve weasts

drip rate stops, CO2 rate continues. more CO2, more dissolved media in the reactor, go the milky colour. mine does exactly the same. PITA. damn clogged outlets....

yeah that makes sense. say you had same drip and bubble rate, then the greater the water volume in the reactor the slower the turnover of water in it. since the slower turnover of water, then the more co2 injected per litre of water in it than a smaller reactor (sort of the reverse than what you'd think as the smaller reactor actually turns over the entire water volume, thus the CO2 as well, faster than a larger reactor) So the larger reactor would have a longer CO2 to media contact time. Hang on,... brain just stopped working... give,... it,... a few.... seconds... I notice if I shake my reactor every now and then, all the CO2 bubbles come running up through the media. Almost like the circulation pump on it is not circulating the water properly causing the bubbles to be stuck at the bottom of the chamber. Last time I ripped it to bits, the media pad that sits at the bottom was so clogged I believe thats what caused the impellor on the circulation pump to screw out. Probably happening again,... already. Dammit. As I discussed with Pies a while back, his Korallin is a short wider design mine is tall and slim (a bit like our statures aye pies ) I would go for the short wider one over the tall narrow design as the circulation pump seems to work that much better - dont think hes ever had a problem with his getting clogged.

well i'd have to say this is perhaps one of the more interesting topics we've had of recent :lol: at least im learning something here tell me about it, PITA. that is one serious disadvantage to a CR and effectively defeats the purpose of trying to maintain consistant levels. the issue i have is that i cant adjust the drip rate to one a second, it essentially stops after a while. if i set about 2 drips a second, it continues fine and never gets blocked. i could possibly force feed the inlet to keep it under constant pressure but i dont believe i should need to do a 'workaround' to maintain that consistancy. stupid thing. dont they sell larger reactors simply because they can hold more media thus last longer? essentially the drip rate would remain about the same, bubble rate perhaps increased because there is more media. i thought that was the only difference.

its all about balance

out of the water though im picking so not good for setting on rocks that are fixed in place or cant be moved? or is it special underwater super glue?!

hmmm, 50+ views... seems like no one else doses additives

yeah puttputt, I agree totally. no idea why its not working, i've mucked around for ages getting drip rate and CO2 bubble rate just right. as i say, its only the first week of testing so unless the corals are playing "catch up" who knows?!

so right you are

Just interested in what people dose daily/weekly/monthly to maintain correct Ca, Mg, Alk + others etc? I never really dosed anything, relied on the Calcium reactor to keep Ca and Mg levels up. Prior to that relied on Kalk in topup water. Also relied on water changes to replenish any other parameters/maintain alk. Seems this is simply not enough. After testing my parameters regularly its clear my SPS (+ bacteria, corraline etc) are hogging as much as they can (and my tank is only half populated with corals!) This is likely to be even moreso than in the past as the corals have grown to at least double their original size. I baked about 600grams of baking soda last night and mixed that up as per that reefkeeping article after seeing how quickly my kH drops (man it goes mega-solid and is a b!@#& to mix). I still need to keep testing to work out a rough average but in the first week dkH dropped by about 4. Likewise for Mg chloride and Calcium chloride hexahydrate, have mixed those up with RO/DI and put into containers now (Ca dropped about 50ppm in 1 week, Mg dropped about 100ppm). So just need to keep testing and work out what I need to add weekly or daily now. How many litres is your tank? What do you dose? How much and how regularly?

if you have nitrites then surely it's still cycling. give it time but do continue with regular water changes

nice one cracker, very cool colour too!

nice alright but at 455 euro's (NZ$900), i think i'll opt out

you said it, i just quoted it :lol: get some pic's too!

seems all the good ideas are gone I wonder if it can be made cheaper than this? http://www.grotech-aquarientechnik.de/c ... ucts_id=86

yeah well, typically its cheap and plentiful i guess, but i've seen it used often where money is irrelevant. eg: Don't listen to what she says, her stories are a dime a dozen. anyways, im NOT getting into a layton/wasp argument over a small piece of written text - you get my point and if you didnt, you're being pedantic oh, and anything related to reef keeping = expensive ira, you should know that by now

"a dime a dozen" means it's very common and easy to get, not cheap to buy. might go check some hydroponics stores out cheers