A DIY Royal Exclusiv calcium reactor

[simonh]

I mentioned in my Dreambox post about a DIY Royal Exclusiv calcium reactor.

Here's a picture:

It is made out of a RE media filter 150 and a bunch of 16mm fittings. It connects to a Eheim 1048 pump on the threaded fittings for recirculation within the reactor. It sits in the sump in the grooved slot alongside the skimmer.

It is fed water by a Watson Marlow 313 peristaltic pump so effluent flow is constant and reliable. The CO2 injection has a Burket solenoid and control unit that switches off CO2 for 1 hours every 12 hours to purge any old gas from the unit. I fed the output from the unit into the filter sock area so an media fines are caught by the 100micron filters.

I ran it for a couple of years until tank teardown. It never missed a beat. I never cleaned it, just topped it up every couple of months with Caribsea ARM media. Also, it recirculated any CO2 that rose to the top and the automatic solenoid meant I never needed to purge it.

Obviously the size is limited by the height of the media filter but it dealt with my 240gallon Deltec tank stocked with hard corals.

 

[slief]

That is pretty slick. I wish Klaus would make these at the factory! The only thing I would have done different would be to have the effluent line come directly out of the top of the lid so its flush with the lid. That way there is no chance of getting any gas trapped in the top of the reactor. The again, from the sounds of your post here and in the Dreambox thread, it seems like it's been working great as it is. Any plans to add a pH probe port?

 

[simonh]

There wasn't enough room for it to sit in the Dreambox and have an exit port on the top.

Also, as it was bit experimental I wanted to make it without modifying the media filter so if it didn't work I'd still have a useable filter. I didn't glue the pipes to the media filter but just made a tight fitting joint so I could try new ideas. I did contemplate adding a pH probe by using a T piece on the outlet side of the pump plumbing instead of the 90 bend and then a PG13.5 gland screwed into the top port bit like the Schuran jet stream.

 

[s2nhle]

Wow, very impressive.