Setting up calcium reactor

lost66 · Jan 1, 2021

I have recently purchased an used calcium reactor and I am having a difficulties with setup. Plumbing is done, system is running but I don't really know if this is working as it should. It was running with no co2 for a week and today I added co2. I have AquaMaxx cTech T-1 with American Marine Pinpoint ph probe. What I don't know is the ph probe part.

This controller has 2 outlets. First outlet (O1) runs when ph is lower than 6.5 and second one (O2) runs when ph is above 6.8. I connected co2 tank valve to second O2 and circulation pump to O1. And this is weird because I don't know if I should connect this pump to O1 or should it run 24/7? Currently when co2 is injecting to the reactor, O2 runs and O1 is off so there is no water flow in the reactor to better distribute co2.
Please advise.

HuduVudu · Jan 1, 2021

Great article from @jda

Calcium Reactor Thoughts and Tuning

docs.google.com

TMB · Jan 1, 2021

The circulation pump needs to be run 24/7, do not connect it to a controller.
For the C02 control - it needs to be hooked to the rising side. Meaning that if the PH goes above the set point - the Co2 solenoid turns on. Additionally you should be able to set the set point to anything you want with the setpoint dials. So if you want the reactor to sit at 6.5, you set the dial to that. When the PH gets above the setpoint - the C02 turns on. HTH

vetteguy53081 · Jan 1, 2021

aquamaxx ctech t-1 calcium reactor - Yahoo Video Search Results

lost66 · Jan 1, 2021

vetteguy53081 said:
aquamaxx ctech t-1 calcium reactor - Yahoo Video Search Results

Believe it or not but I do have a basic skills using google. And still, I decided to ask people here

lost66 · Jan 1, 2021

thanks

TMB said:
The circulation pump needs to be run 24/7, do not connect it to a controller.
For the C02 control - it needs to be hooked to the rising side. Meaning that if the PH goes above the set point - the Co2 solenoid turns on. Additionally you should be able to set the set point to anything you want with the setpoint dials. So if you want the reactor to sit at 6.5, you set the dial to that. When the PH gets above the setpoint - the C02 turns on. HTH

Thanks, makes sense.

Mark Gray · Jan 30, 2021

lost66 said:
thanks

Thanks, makes sense.

did you get it working?

lost66 · Jan 30, 2021

Kind of. It is working but from time to time I see zero flow running from the reactor. The design of this reactor is terrible. There should be valve at the end of the flow, not somewhere in the middle.
I was checking alk each day and now I have it stable enough. +0.1 per couple of days.

Mark Gray · Jan 30, 2021

lost66 said:
Kind of. It is working but from time to time I see zero flow running from the reactor. The design of this reactor is terrible. There should be valve at the end of the flow, not somewhere in the middle.
I was checking alk each day and now I have it stable enough. +0.1 per couple of days.

Curious have you checked you effluent coming out of the rector. Mine the best I can tell is about 50 DKH I have to dilute it a lotto get it to read.

lost66 · Jan 30, 2021

No I have not checked that. I don't see the point. That number won't tell me anything about adjustment. I have properly set co2 valve and controller. I adjusted the bubbles once, flow maybe 3 times and I think it is kind of a stable. I don't change water at this point due to a dino war so I think when I will return to weekly water changes I will need to adjust reactor one more time. But I think I know more or less how to tune it.
Reactor is rated I think up to 300g, I have 250g system. I cannot have 1 bubble per second, I opened valve to have multiple bubbles at once. And I hear selenoid opens valve from time to time, not too often so I think bubbles are fine. Now I adjust the flow which at this point is a super slow flow, but not dripping.

Mark Gray · Jan 30, 2021

lost66 said:
No I have not checked that. I don't see the point. That number won't tell me anything about adjustment. I have properly set co2 valve and controller. I adjusted the bubbles once, flow maybe 3 times and I think it is kind of a stable. I don't change water at this point due to a dino war so I think when I will return to weekly water changes I will need to adjust reactor one more time. But I think I know more or less how to tune it.
Reactor is rated I think up to 300g, I have 250g system. I cannot have 1 bubble per second, I opened valve to have multiple bubbles at once. And I hear selenoid opens valve from time to time, not too often so I think bubbles are fine. Now I adjust the flow which at this point is a super slow flow, but not dripping.

The only reason I check mine is it lets me know my reactor is working well, the effluent is saturated I believe. Man sorry to hear about your dino's I fought mine a long time. One thing that seemed to help me and was pretty cheap and easy and no chemicals. I put and air stone right next to my return pump and blew micro bubbles though out the tank. the type I got seemed to not tolerate the oxygen saturation I guess.

Suohhen · Jan 31, 2021

One thing I like to do with my CaRx is achieve a balanced pH rather than let the solenoid control it. The reason is that this let's me set up an alert on Apex for when flow slows down, which is the biggest issue in my experience, I've only ever had my pH imcrease from running out of co2 which is something that I can plan for and easily keep up on by glancing at the manifold. Without Apex I can still see the benefit of doing this however because it reduces the number of cycles the solenoid goes thru theoretically increasing its life and gives you a auditory indication that flow has stalled as solenoids are pretty noisy. Additionally it allows you to check the current pH at any time and get an idea if things are stable or starting to drift one direction or the other.
Obviously the risk of doing this is that pH can drift up more easily and without having anything to alert you such as an Apex it may or may not be a good idea in your case.

lost66 · Jan 31, 2021

Yeah, selenoid is noisy. My stand is closed though so I don't hear that too often. I think I have a good balance in the reactor. The valve doesn't open very often. I don't use Apex to control reactor. I would love to but unfortunately I don't have spare outlet. I run my reef on a budget and cannot justify $100 for additional outlets yet.

When I was dosing I was checking alk each day and stopped doing that when I dialed dosers correctly. And I didn't compensate alk change during the water changes and alk spiked up to 13 and in a few days I lost most of my sps. Now when I have alk stable(ish) I don't really see if my corals like it or not because it is mostly graveyard

Again, budget reef so finding affordable source of corals is not easy and time consuming.

Suohhen · Jan 31, 2021

Oh if you have Apex you can still benefit from monitoring. Control is nice but the real benefit of Apex is to have it alert you when pH drifts. Just as Mark was recommending you can do this by monitoring the effluent but in this case instead of alk you can have your Apex alert you when the effluent varies in pH and you can also track pH to look for trends. The caveat is that effluent can be hard on a pH probe so I would only recommend using a double junction probe which is not what the Apex comes with and costs about twice as much.
Then again when is cost never a huge factor in anything we do in this hobby, but the value of monitoring your CaRx is huge.
I am basically in the same boat as you in terms of following a tight budget so I improvise where I can but I actually do have an add on EB4 so I am really just being cheap but it is on my list.
Your tank looks great, I am always amazed when people go thru terrible crashes and not only persevere but manage to stabilize and keep pushing forward.