Biopellet Reactor: Tuning

[Aqualund]

For clarification on my turnover: 16000 gph return pump . Although not pressure rated and I've got some turns and 10' of head from basement sump to tank on a system total water volume of 275g. Fits the bill

Per your suggestion I bumped up the flow through reactor and will let it ride a bit at these settings

I didn't see any in the video, but were you running 3" pipe with your 16k gph pump? Anything less and you're really choking it off and losing soooo much to friction loss.

I also guess I'm surprised because the pipes I saw draining to your black sump didn't seem very big, hence why i asked about the turnover rate.

Beyond that, 3 reeflo hammerheads instead of one 16k gph will save you about $60-$100 a month in electricity alone. I know this because I did the same thing in my farm.

LOL, if you're not interested in switching pumps...you interested in buying my gently used 16k gph pumps?!

 

[Chrisjbarry]

Are you the same person as aqualund? Lol..

.

I have no idea who that is.

 

[Chrisjbarry]

Aqualund is right about the effluent needing to be opened more to allow the current bacteria in your tank a place to feed (the pellets) think of it like a cal reactor. If your only dripping the effluent out and you cal and alk just keep dropping what would you do? You would open up the effluent to raise it up or add more co2.

With pellets if you are not getting to drop in nitrate and phosphates what do you do? Add more pellets or open up the effluent. This allows more water from the tank to be turned over the pellets. 1 dip an hour from effluent maybe good for about 1 gallon of water if that.
I think your pellets are running a little hard and have to say I would turn them down some. I agree with Damon on them shearing off the film that you are trying to build up. At the rate you have them tumbling you will be releasing the pellets into the water like crazy. May take a lot of skimming to pull it out after the fact.
I will try and film my tumble on mine.

 

[Aquarist007]

Aqualund is right about the effluent needing to be opened more to allow the current bacteria in your tank a place to feed (the pellets) think of it like a cal reactor. If your only dripping the effluent out and you cal and alk just keep dropping what would you do? You would open up the effluent to raise it up or add more co2.

With pellets if you are not getting to drop in nitrate and phosphates what do you do? Add more pellets or open up the effluent. This allows more water from the tank to be turned over the pellets. 1 dip an hour from effluent maybe good for about 1 gallon of water if that.
I think your pellets are running a little hard and have to say I would turn them down some. I agree with Damon on them shearing off the film that you are trying to build up. At the rate you have them tumbling you will be releasing the pellets into the water like crazy. May take a lot of skimming to pull it out after the fact.
I will try and film my tumble on mine.

The bacteria that you want to supply carbon exist in biofilms in and on the reef rock in the tank.
Bacteria in the reactor are insignificant. The more the pellets tumble the more carbon is introduced to the tank which is converted to acetate.. The useable form for bacteria
You are supplying carbon for all bacteria in the tank. Some are consumed by corals too
The mulm that accumulates in the reactor can slow down the flow of water through the reactor. Increasing the flow.. Tumble rate.. Will help keep that to a minimum

 

[DamonG]

This is on my older system, but it is the rumble rate I always set or a little lower.

Reef Dynamics INS135 and BPR135: http://youtu.be/iULkonjdrSY

And this is my last system. My new one I'm just getting used to..

quick video update 091813 reef: http://youtu.be/0MOGQx5OSa4

20minute edit:Reef progress: http://youtu.be/R-Kfv7Fn6ak


And dude, how is your skimmer doing now?

 

[gdemos]

Thanks guys good info.
Skimmer: still dialing in. When I raised it to 7" I also cleaned her. So that could be part of the issue of her temperament at present. Some overflowing as I'm working it in. Approaching set and forget I feel soon

I feel that the dialing if the skimmer remains the key and the tuning of BPR to follow.

Have BPR effluent at 360 gpd

 

[gdemos]

Ordered MB7 and will dose local to the reactor per directions
Meanwhile still dialing in skimmer and I'm sure the MB7 dose will further require my attention to skimmer tune.

I feel once the MB7 runs a course I will notice changes both in skim and skimmer behavior. I will also monitor pellet appearance an mulm buildup as I suspect there will be some

If I can run the MB7 dose for a couple weeks while dialing in skimmer I will slowly raiseBPReffluent

SOUND reasonable?

Btw running 48 oz pellets sold by RD

 

[DamonG]

Thanks guys good info.
Skimmer: still dialing in. When I raised it to 7" I also cleaned her. So that could be part of the issue of her temperament at present. Some overflowing as I'm working it in. Approaching set and forget I feel soon

I feel that the dialing if the skimmer remains the key and the tuning of BPR to follow.

Have BPR effluent at 360 gpd

Is it like the dynamics in there is a sort of place to start with the skim foam in the neck? As far as the instructions are concerned? In hindsight, I remember now that other skimmers I've had in the past didn't come with instructions so thorough, so possibly you might not. And yes, that skim level and quantity is very key.. At least for and from what I've experienced with pellets and skimmers..

I took a little screen capture of what I vaguely remember your skimmer looking like. I annotated basically where I begin my tuning. It may be different for your skimmer, but I figured at least I would try to help(and cut down on some of your time) if possible.

In the picture, you will see the pink little bubbles in the neck area(hey, no jokes about the pink.. Lol, very effective and I'm a guy, don't feel like going through color picking on my phone.. Lol), that is where my initial bubble break is. It is where the beginning of the big bubbles begin. Then, the green line, is where my actual foam production begins. I vary that up and down depending on how wet I want my skim. You have to keep the neck clean while doing the adjustments so you can accurately see where your bubble and foam levels are.

But the majority of the time, with my skimmers(Rd of course) , I have found that my correct and most effective skim is when my foam production begins just a little under the very top of the neck opening. But, at this level, you kind of have to be careful of overflows. It builds up liquid fairly fast and I use this as a purge setting for the system. Say for instance when I am burping my reactor to get the excess mulm out(I am sorry, but I refuse to run pellets that hard continously. It has never been good as far as nutrient in my systems, and that's why I paid what I did for this reactor. I simply don't need to as the pellets don't stick, never have, and I do t the purge once a month, so I never have had clogged lines ). I will let the skimmer run wet (clear) to get that stuff out of the system(and it doesn't take long, like 3 to 4 minutes) and then put the bubble level and the pellet reactor back to where it was.

But thats where I "begin" and play around those settings. I hope this helps in some way..

 

[DamonG]

Oh and another thing.. Levels and effluent.. You should see an initial pretty drastic drop in your levels. Like for example, one day it will be at 50 nitrate and then the next, it may go down to 40( In this tank, because I'm running excess pellets, mine dropped from 10 to 2.5 over night. Previous tank I think it went from maybe 15 to 2 in 24 hours). But the thing is, you will see a definitive dip in levels. That is the indicator to start actually "tuning the reactor".. It will accompany the infamous change in skim or should be very close..

But after that initial dip, depending on how fast the drop occurred, you will then want to start playing with the effluent to either speed up or slow down the process. The more it's open, the faster and more it will strip. But.. And once again, the big thing is your skimmer running right. If your skimmer isn't running right, opening that valve is throwing so much more stuff in your tank that your going to defeat your purpose of the pellets.

You want to get the job done with the reactor, with the least amount of nutrient throw back into your system "from" the reactor.. Once you start throwing excess sugars from the reactor, you are "going" to have some kind of problem. Problems that frankly can be avoided and never should even be thought about completely with this reactor..

 

[MBC2012]

Got tired of waiting for results after 3 months. Pulled reactor off tank several days ago.

Reef Dynamics reactor rated for 135 gal and 250 ml +/- of Ecobak plus pellets for sale. PM me

 

[gdemos]

Thanks Damon. Shy of setting up a campout post in my sumproom to keep an eye on the skimmer I'm trying to limit my adjustments to a couple tweaks per day. Certainly more sensitive since I have raised it so still working on getting it right.

Here's a quick vid update. Once I dose mb7 and that takes course I will likely increase effluent of BPR slowly

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlrgU0J6emw

Greg

 

[gdemos]

Correction. BPR effluent is 350 gpd not gph

 

[gdemos]

 

[gdemos]

Is it me or do I sense some RD haters chiming in? Be that as it may I appreciate the interactive learning of working with what we have in the forum. Not buying, not selling, there are other places for that

Thanks again

 

[Wangspeed]

I kick started my pellets by putting them into a water bottle with some old tank water and a bunch of disgusting skimmate. I kept changing the water out with more skimmate every few days. When I put my RD reactor online it was active immediately. My N and P levels are being held at 1ppm and .02 according to AWT.

 

[DamonG]

Cool and no problem..

And lol, there are certainly opportunistic people anywhere you go tbh.. But it comes with the territory.. One of the things is filtering on forums for me honestly.. But I, like yourself, enjoy the feedback..

Keep updates rolling though and your tank is nice looking for sure.. And that's a nice sized skimmer dude.. And yep, get what your saying about the width and squatty design..

 

[gdemos]

My skimmer has been freaking out. I have two years of experience tuning the skimmer and this puzzles me. Overflowing daily. This morning after cleaning the cup (yup overflowed overnight) I dialed the water level way down; for reference with the cup removed the bubbles did not eclipse the collar/ neck. Came home after a 12 hour workday and skimmer overflowed again. Now this has been happening ever since I raised it from a sump level of 11" to 7". So now I have the gate valve turned almost all the way down to see if I can prevent this overflow. I know common sense is to remove the full (overfilling) cup water and discard; in order to remove this water/skimmate from the system, but this is not skimmate I'm talking about, it's basically clear system water.

Beginning to wonder if the ambient air temp is an issue as I'm drawing cool air into the skimmer from outside the sump room

 

[gdemos]

Dwyer airflow meter reads 25-30 liters per minute on skimmer airline tells me not a pump issue

Here's a pic of skimmer water level dialed way down. Now there's no way this will overflow....

 

[DamonG]

I Is that the original break point of your foam because that's mighty frothy.. Like something is going on with the water. I know it sounds crazy probably. But just look at it and see if it seems "sudsy" versus kind of loose and wet.

The one way I learned (by looking at Jeff again) was, when you have a lot of protein in your water, the bubble level at the very bottom of your skimmer will drop lower than normal( I wish I could remember the video, but he was at a demo showing off a sump system). I never paid attention prior to that, but ever since, if it's loaded up, the first thing I do is look in the skimmer body.

The other thing is my output from the unit literally "burps" and it's not quiet. You will all of a sudden see tons of microbubbles, tons of excess bubbles coming out the output (in your case I think it's the gate) and it will literally burp or kind of gurgle. Not like normal when it's just humming in normal operation.

The flip side of it, is that it could be the pellets kicking in. But I think check the water going through your skimmer area first.. If there's more bubbling than normal, you may want to throw some carbon in there. I like controlled overflowing of my skimmer when it gets like that(varying the level and siphoning the clear liquid out, tossing it) , because in my book, it's trying to get something out of there, but I know that's extreme.

But to treat your air temp theory, just remove the inlet that comes from outside and pull the air from your room instead for an hour or so. Lol the flip side to doing this, and only negative, is that your drawing in "anything" that's in your outside air. We would like to think it's all good, but then, we love in the 21st century. Lord knows what's in the air that we can't see.

 

[gdemos]

I change carbon every 3-4 weeks in the BRS dual reactor (no GFO still amidst BP startup).

The skimm in above pic is the result of me dialing the gate way back as I'm tired of overflows. I feel this all went whacky when I tried getting a wetter skimmate. So now I'm back to basics starting dry for a while. Correct me if I'm wrong but the downside of the dry skimmate is this may mean more of the BPR effluent is hitting the system as opposed to the skimmer seeing as it that the BPR effluent is plumbed to the skimmer intake. And therefore less nutrient reduction.

Yet too wet (overflowing) is no good either!

So going dry for a day or so and will see if it stays dry or if the fractionizing becomes more efficient and ultimately 'wetter' skimmate

For me the wet skim quest has been too finicky