Hi there,
I have an IceCap Kalkwasser reactor that I put to use several months ago. It's been great for helping me maintain a remarkably stable pH as well as alkalinity.
Unfortunately, my setup is a bit strange and I encounter relatively frequent problems with it overflowing from the cap. In an unrelated post, I asked if that lid was supposed to threaded or not. The answer I got was that it is just a cover, not air/liquid tight.
I have a closet behind my AIO tank. Being an AIO, I can't exactly place the reactor right next to the DP and having it dose as expected. Instead, I thought I would be clever and position the reactor higher than DP water level and in the closet just behind the tank as close as I could get it. The total distance from the outlet of the reactor to the DP sump is about 3 feet (diagonally). There are no kinks and the flow path is in constant decline (no ups/bends/twists in the dosing tube).
The input to the reactor is connected to a Neptune DOS which is scheduled to provide X ml of RODI throughout the day provided some conditions are met (i.e. pH and Alk don't exceed a specific threshold, dose no more than 30 seconds at a time, waiting 15 min between doses, maintenance mode, or other conditions that turn off returns, etc).
Weeks can go by without a hitch. I periodically check the reactor (days sometimes up to a week) to make sure the KW hasn't built up and clogged the outlet port. I use a pipe cleaning brush to do this. It does seem to clog frequently enough to be a problem. When I notice that DOS shows large amounts of volume without a corresponding increase in pH or Alk that there is probably an issue. Sure enough, the issue is usually that the reactor is overflowing. If I jiggle the outlet tubing just right sometimes the fluid comes out in a torrent or it trickles. I can then clean the ends of the tubing or check the outlet port again.
In order to minimize clogging, I only have the reactor stir for about 5 minutes once a day with an hour-long settling period. During this time no KW is dosed.
So the questions I have are:
My application may not simply be optimal. I see YouTube videos showing the units placed directly next to sumps minimizing any travel or tubing.
Thankfully, the recent occurrences haven't caused damage, but they were messy. I will likely move this unit to the tank in my build thread that is presently underway, but until that happens I'd like to see if I could keep using it where it is. If not, I'll have to find another solution to my problem. I've even thought about adding an optical sensor to the mixing chamber! But then that doesn't solve the problem.
I've attached a few pictures to show what is going on (including the container that caught the overflow from today's incident).
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
I have an IceCap Kalkwasser reactor that I put to use several months ago. It's been great for helping me maintain a remarkably stable pH as well as alkalinity.
Unfortunately, my setup is a bit strange and I encounter relatively frequent problems with it overflowing from the cap. In an unrelated post, I asked if that lid was supposed to threaded or not. The answer I got was that it is just a cover, not air/liquid tight.
I have a closet behind my AIO tank. Being an AIO, I can't exactly place the reactor right next to the DP and having it dose as expected. Instead, I thought I would be clever and position the reactor higher than DP water level and in the closet just behind the tank as close as I could get it. The total distance from the outlet of the reactor to the DP sump is about 3 feet (diagonally). There are no kinks and the flow path is in constant decline (no ups/bends/twists in the dosing tube).
The input to the reactor is connected to a Neptune DOS which is scheduled to provide X ml of RODI throughout the day provided some conditions are met (i.e. pH and Alk don't exceed a specific threshold, dose no more than 30 seconds at a time, waiting 15 min between doses, maintenance mode, or other conditions that turn off returns, etc).
Weeks can go by without a hitch. I periodically check the reactor (days sometimes up to a week) to make sure the KW hasn't built up and clogged the outlet port. I use a pipe cleaning brush to do this. It does seem to clog frequently enough to be a problem. When I notice that DOS shows large amounts of volume without a corresponding increase in pH or Alk that there is probably an issue. Sure enough, the issue is usually that the reactor is overflowing. If I jiggle the outlet tubing just right sometimes the fluid comes out in a torrent or it trickles. I can then clean the ends of the tubing or check the outlet port again.
In order to minimize clogging, I only have the reactor stir for about 5 minutes once a day with an hour-long settling period. During this time no KW is dosed.
So the questions I have are:
- Should I expect my configuration to work?
- Is there something I haven't considered (other than the distance) that might lead to this behavior?
My application may not simply be optimal. I see YouTube videos showing the units placed directly next to sumps minimizing any travel or tubing.
Thankfully, the recent occurrences haven't caused damage, but they were messy. I will likely move this unit to the tank in my build thread that is presently underway, but until that happens I'd like to see if I could keep using it where it is. If not, I'll have to find another solution to my problem. I've even thought about adding an optical sensor to the mixing chamber! But then that doesn't solve the problem.
I've attached a few pictures to show what is going on (including the container that caught the overflow from today's incident).
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.