Biopellet reactor issues, please help.

[lpsouth1978]

Please help us out, we have been dealing with this issue for quite a while and we are at our whits end.

We have the Reef Octopus BR140 with about 1200ml of pellets in it. We CANNOT find a pump that will properly run it. We started with a Jebao DCT-4000 (about 1000gph), and it ran it well for a month or so. Then it slowed down to the point that it would not churn the pellets at all even after being cleaned.

Then we upgraded to a DCT-12000 (about 2500gph) and the same thing happened, just after only a few weeks. We cleaned the pump, and it did not make any difference.

Tonight we switched to a Mag Drive 24 thinking that the Jebao pumps were to blame. We expected the pump to be WAYYYY too powerful, so we installed a ball valve. We plugged in the pump and..... almost no movement.

What is going on??? The recommended flow is 710-920gph. We have pushed 3000gph and it is not enough. I know that the pellets will build up some resistance, but this is ridiculous! Is the RO just a bad design? What can or should we do?

 

[lpsouth1978]

No thoughts? I am running out of ideas. We are not talking about modifying the reactor by placing a dispersion plate at the bottom of the reactor and putting the pellets on top of this instead of letting them fall all the way to the bottom of the reactor. We are hoping that this will allow the water to be more evenly dispersed, keeping more of the pellets in motion.

Does anyone have any thought on this plan? Any other ideas?

 

[laserjim]

Sounds like your reactor is plugged, or you have the pump plugged in to the wrong location. Check and see if your pump is plugged into the output instead of the input. No way you need that much flow.

 

[lpsouth1978]

Sounds like your reactor is plugged, or you have the pump plugged in to the wrong location. Check and see if your pump is plugged into the output instead of the input. No way you need that much flow.

The reactor is connected properly and we were unable to find anything clogging it. That being said, it seems to have started to work a little bit better during the day yesterday, though the flow still seems low considering the pump in use.

Here is a quick video of the pellets moving this morning. This is connected to a Mag Drive 24, so approximately 2400gph.

 

[CaminDFW2]

I see the pellets are clogging the screen likely restricting flow. I would take the screen off and clean it.. I have to take a toothpick to the holes on mine to clean them out. with that many GPH on a pump; those pellets should be flying around the reactor.

 

[cincyjim]

I used the Biopellets with no success no matter how big of a pump I would use. As soon as the pellets got wet when the reactor was filling up, they would clump together and never tumble. I stopped using them about a year ago because of this.

 

[lpsouth1978]

Ok, so we finally found a solution to our problem. It involved us improving on the Reef Octopus design. It seems that the original design allowed the pellets to compact at the bottom of the reactor, which is conical, and block the water flow as they clumped together. No matter how strong the pump was, it would still clump and block the water flow.

The fix was to order an extra plate that they use to keep the pellets from exiting the reactor. We then cut the stock coupler off the bottom of the down tube and screwed the new plate to the bottom of the down tube, leaving about 1/2"of the down tube below the plate. We then wrapped a small amount of teflon thread tape around the down tube and slipped a piece of 3/4" PVC over the small bit of the down tube (just enough length the make the whole down tube sit up where it needed to be.

We are now getting better movement than ever from the pellets and using less power to do it. I have attached a couple of pics of the fix along with a short video of the pellets moving. We are now using the Jebao DCT-12000 turned down to level 4 of 10.