cloakerpoked, question about your kalk reactor.

[miatawnt2b]

I just had a quick question or 2 about your Kalk reactor. Do you have any problems with the 4" cleanout on the top sealing properly? Second, do you run the maxijet and the dosing pump at the same time?

I am thinking about making one of these, but I am going to do mine slightly differently in that I am not going to be adding topoff through the reactor. Since I have a method I like for topoff, I am simply going to take water from the aquarium to the reactor and back to the aquarium.

Thoughts?

-J

 

[cloakerpoked]

Yeah, that would work too.

Initially, I had a problem with the cap sealing. This was fixed by increasing the amount of teflon tape I used. As long as you use it quite liberally, the thing doesn't leak at all (or at least mine doesn't). Another way to do it would be to make the cap screw down onto a piece that's inside somehow and make a compression fitting out of it. I'm not sure what parts you'd need to do it, but it would definitely work if you did it that way.

I run my pumps simultaneously, for the ease of doing it that way. If I had my way, the MJ would run 15 minutes before the dosing pump. My results are pretty good. I run it on a timer right now, not a float switch, so it more or less makes up for my top off water, but not exactly. I run it for 1/2 an hour a day.

Using your method might be even easier, since you wouldn't need a dosing pump at all. If you used a submerged MJ or any kind of feed pump with a back flow valve on it, you should be able to feed the reactor with your pump in your (presumeably) sump. From there, just let it agitate the water in the reactor, and direct the overflow back into the sump using gravity.