Calcium Reactor Goes nuts??

[Water Dog]

Some people just top off with new media. What I do is I wait till it gets down to between 1/2 and 1/3 full. By then the remaining media will look gritty and broken up. When it looks like that, I use my buckethead wet dry vac and suck it all out and refill it with brand new media. It might be overkill but I’d like to think that the new media helps avoid the clogging and bogging down of the recirculating pump and lines.

 

[DarthSimon]

This video is exactly the way I am tuning my CaRx..... Slow and steady....

Alternate methods are possible. I have found this way of running my calcium reactor much easier.

I keep my Alk at 10.5 with a high demand system using reborn. My PH inside my reactor runs at 6.93.

Video is a great video. Some spots are slow but very informative.

 

[jda]

How can that be? How would you ever know when your close to running out and need a refill?

You lift up the tank and see how heavy it is to see how much is left. The dude at the welding shop told me once that one single ounce of liquid CO2 can keep a 40lb tank at 800ish PSI trying to fully expand back to gas. The only time that you are supposed to be below 800ish is when the liquid is all gone and the cylinder is emptying just gas.

I replace the media when it stops producing alk at about 22-26 dKh. This is usually about when there is about 1/3 left.

 

[jda]

I have said this a million times, but you will get better results if you tune the reactor by hand to constantly provide steady pH and output. Using a PH probe gets wonky with the ups and downs (.1 matters) when your tank is super mature and you need the thing to melt 22kgs of media every 6 months to feed the beast.

This is not that hard... it is in about a 40 drip to 10 bubble ratio... then test alk that should be over 20... the dial the drips and bubbles (in that ratio) up, or down, so that your tank stays stable. This is like tuning up a carburetor... very few know how to do it anymore, but nearly everybody knew how back in the day. ...except that CaRx is not some dead tech in tanks from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, and knowing how to tune a CaRx is still useful.