New Reef Octopus Light\Macro Algae Reactor

[Reefrats]

Just set mine up and posted a thread about it, but happy to contribute here!

Can you post a link to the thread?

 

[Reefrats]

Can you post a link to the thread?

Found it!

 

[Peace River]

What size tank do you have? I hope to put it in the sump too.

I have the light reactor L150 in a Reef Octopus Octo 36A sump. It is a tight fit with the Reef Octopus 150EXT skimmer so I got a Reef Octopus Essence 130 skimmer and it is a much better fit.

#reefoctopus

 

[Michael Hull]

Mine is in my Red Sea sump on my Max S500, roughly 130 gallons.

 

[monti mike]

Is there a lot of light bleed out of the reactor? Is it growing algae outside of the reactor in the sump?

 

[Peace River]

Is there a lot of light bleed out of the reactor? Is it growing algae outside of the reactor in the sump?

No. That has not been an issue at all with mine.

 

[monti mike]

No. That has not been an issue at all with mine.

Awesome. I think I’m sold on one. Thanks for sharing!

 

[Michael Hull]

Agreed, no light bleed issues. I'm having a heck of a time getting Chaeto growing, though. Lots of green slimy algae, but not much Chaeto growth after the first time cleaning. I did turn down the flow and increase the lights to try again, so seeing how that's doing. Hard to know until I open it back up again. Definitely something growing in there though.

 

[shred5]

Awesome. I think I’m sold on one. Thanks for sharing!

Yea light bleed from my fuge is why I bought one. I was getting algae growing in my skimmer. It does not anymore.

 

[Letterkenny]

How is everyone liking the reactors? Working in a new build and either planning this or the Tunze. Anyone running the triton method?

 

[Manose]

How is everyone liking the reactors? Working in a new build and either planning this or the Tunze. Anyone running the triton method?

I love mine. I have taken out my skimmer and use this and my daily water changes as main nutrient control. Mine is on a Red Sea 750

 

[monti mike]

How is everyone liking the reactors? Working in a new build and either planning this or the Tunze. Anyone running the triton method?

I set mine up last week. It’s too soon to say. Others have great performance though. Here’s the first set up. Im going to check the growth in a month.

 

[Peace River]

I'm very pleased with my #reefoctopus LR-150! I have noticed far less algae attempting to grow in the tank since I installed the light reactor about 5 months ago.

 

[Letterkenny]

Nice clean up write up. I ended up buying the Tunze cheato reactor but will buy this Reef Octopus cheato reactor for my new 120 gallon tank.
I will then be able to compare the two.

Did you end up getting this and the Tunze? Would like to hear your thoughts comparing the two.

 

[BighohoReef]

I have been wanting to try a Chaetomorpha reactor for a while and recently got the RO Light Reactor.


I have been running a refugium with Chaetomorpha and it has become a mess. It really is just a detritus trap and the detritus settles on the bottom of the fuge. It is really hard to clean or siphon out with all the little pieces of Chaeto on the bottom. Also the little pieces of chaeto start getting caught in the trap causing the water level to rise in the refugium area. They also get caught in the skimmer compartment trap and they get into my skimmers needle wheel causing the water levels to change in my skimmer. I like running different algae’s in my systems to help with biodiversity. I believe it helps combat bad algae’s like dinoflagellates, hair or cyanobacteria.


Another issue with a fuge is the light spills into other areas of the sump causing algae and especially in my skimmer (See picture below).



So hopefully this reactor solves allot of the problems. You can see in the pics how bad the bottom of the sump was with detritus and now how nice and clean it looks with the new reactor.



The quality is really nice and the red and white look very cool.

It came very well packed.

It comes with a Aquatrance 1200 Pump. It also comes with two barb fitting and two PVC slip fittings.

For more specifics on the light reactor see Coralvues website:

https://www.coralvue.com/reef-octopus-light-reactor


Set up was a breeze.

Also for a video on set up see their video:





I hooked mine up with red silicone tubing for the supply and hard plumbed the output.

I think it would look pretty slick with red PVC piping and white elbows. I used just white because that is what I had.





If you can afford it and have the room I would go for the larger reactor, this would allow for more algae to grow before having to remove it. The main disadvantage of the light reactor is it must be removed from the sump to remove the algae. With a refugium you can just reach in and grab a hand full of algae and throw it out.. It is a trade off and I think it will actually be much less maintenance overall with the light reactor. It will be much easier to clean the refugium compartment because it won’t be trapping all the detritus and all the little pieces of chaeto. I won’t have to clean out the protein skimmer of algae or the little pieces of cheato that get trapped in the needle wheel. I won’t have to continually remove the algae from the compartment divider fins and the salinity levels will stay much more stable because the fins in the sump wont clog with cheato.



With the reef Octopus Light Reactor the sump looks neat and clean and I like that, maybe a little OCD.



You can actually see the algae in the reactor so I should be able to tell when it needs to be harvested. It is a pretty cool effect the way the reactor grows.

I added a little iron, phosphate, and nitrogen to help kick start the reactor, all things algae require to grow. If your cheato is getting light in color try some iron and maybe a little iodine. My nutrients are pretty low and I will put up exactly what they are when I test them here.



I would like to update the thread every few weeks a for a while to let people know how the different algaes are growing. I added Chaetomorpha in two compartments and in the other I added caulerpa racemosa.

I will be running on reverse daylight to help with PH drop at night.

In this picture you can see my current refugium lighting:

In this picture you can see the detritus in the bottom of my sump.

Algae in my skimmer from light spilling over from my current refugium.

Plumbed:

Two type of algae added:




In the sump.
In this picture you can see how clean the bottom of my sump is now.

Thank you for awesome review! Details are spot on. Based on what your doing I might give this a go.

 

[TexasTodd]

Any updates here?

 

[shred5]

It has been offline for a bit. It was on my rack system and I decided to switch out some of my tanks on it.
Since I was taking them down I decided to take the whole system off line and do some mods to my sump I had been wanting to do. It will be back on eventually. The system is now up and running again. You can use the link below to see where I am at on this system.

I just got a IceCap turf scrubber for another system to try. Be interesting to see how they compare.

Build Thread - Shred5's Invert, fish and coral propagation and aquaculture system

This is a continuation of my old thread on this build. https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/shred5s-large-coral-propagation-frag-system.365734/ I have changed focus so much I figured it would be best too just start a new thread on this build. I had also asked them to change the name of the...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[Deezreef]

Awesome info.
Deciding between LR150 and LR200 and hoping for some input. Issue is space in and around sump. There would be more space for the LR150, but the tank is total 24o(ish) gal volume. In your opinion, would the LR 150 work for such a tank?

 

[shred5]

Awesome info.
Deciding between LR150 and LR200 and hoping for some input. Issue is space in and around sump. There would be more space for the LR150, but the tank is total 24o(ish) gal volume. In your opinion, would the LR 150 work for such a tank?

A lot depends on load or if you have some other type of exporting nutrients like a skimmer, etc. If you don't have allot of fish or use a skimmer smaller may be fine.
I don't use mine as main nutrient export and use it more for biodiversity and a side affect is higher PH at night by running reverse daylight so I didn't really need a giant one.

It doesn't hurt to oversize at all, the algae will grow depending on the nutrients available anyway. But if you don't have the space it is understandable. Smaller is better than nothing.

It also is fully sealed so it can be run externally.

 

[Deezreef]

Thanks!

A lot depends on load or if you have some other type of exporting nutrients like a skimmer, etc. If you don't have allot of fish or use a skimmer smaller may be fine.
I don't use mine as main nutrient export and use it more for biodiversity and a side affect is higher PH at night by running reverse daylight so I didn't really need a giant one.

It doesn't hurt to oversize at all, the algae will grow depending on the nutrients available anyway. But if you don't have the space it is understandable. Smaller is better than nothing.

It also is fully sealed so it can be run externally.

The tank is a Reefer900, I have a Reef Octopus 250INT skimmer which takes up most of the sump space. The extra sump is being used for ATO. do not currently have about 10 fish currently and may add another 3 in the near future. Nitrates about 25, Phosphate about 0.5. Currently running Chemipure Elite and water changes that do not seem to make a huge difference in the levels above. I feed 4 times per week approx 1 cube/3.5g each time.
The foot print of the larger reactor Will definitely be challenging. External installation is unfortunately not an option because of location of the tank. Equipment cabinet is jam packed with equipment already as well.