North Dakota Mini-Ocean

[jnarowe]

don't get fixated on the bubble count either. I would leave that at a constant and vary the water flow to get the right dosage for your tank. I run mine at 6.42 to 6.45 pH.

I doubt highly that there is anything "wrong" with the reactor since they are such simple devices, but posting a pic or video of it would help us to spot any red flags. It is possible that it is not recirculating the CO2 properly.

 

[Reefaquariumnut]

I am using a controller for the pH. Also, i did shut down the reactor last week for a couple days and the dKH dropped from 12 to 10. But then when i put the reactor back online it has slowly increased again to 10.4ish. I will post a picture shortly.

 

[Goodwin9]

Regarding the bubbles, I believe it is the media. I have two identical RM reactors running on my tanks. The first video is the reactor using GenX media.



In this other reactor, I am using ARM media and don't get the bubbles I do with the GenX.

 

[Reefaquariumnut]

YES!!! It looks exactly like that. My pH has dropped to 8.21 (from 8.41) so the ACIII has shut it down. Atleast I know the CO2 is getting into the tank. I decided to unplug it for a while anyway as the dKH was up around 10.6. I will just dose calcium until the dKH gets to 8ish and then try the calcium reactor again.

 

[jnarowe]

I disagree (with respect!). What I see there is the same action I get when I change media and restart the reactor. It will blow excess bubbles for quite a while before it settles down and I attribute that to the porosity of the media. In other words, it holds a lot of gas within the coral bones.

If this continues for more than a few hours then I would contend that your bubble count is too high and not allowing the media to offgas and work it through the reactor.

 

[Reefaquariumnut]

Mine has continued since i fired it up and continues even after I shut off the CO2.

***Pictured with the CO2 off

 

[Reefaquariumnut]

I did get some close-ups of the corals in the tank.

***I have noticed this happening on a couple corals in the tank...I think this is called RTN?

***This one has some RTN on the bottom, but it looks like it is growing (notice the tips)...or am i seeing something wrong?

***Does these look like they're growing too?

 

[Reefaquariumnut]

***Also remember when i was talking about small bubbles on the rock??? Does that correspond to high nitrates? or phosphates? or nitrites? or ammonia? or just heat?

 

[jnarowe]

um...that's a reactor and not a skimmer? If there is no CO2 being injected and it remains like that, then you must have a leak somewhere that is acting as a venturi. The media is relatively inert. It does not "generate" bubbles.

It really looks like it is either installed or designed incorrectly...there should not be a big air gap in the neck like that. In fact, the neck is a little cartoonish IMO. Why would it be so tall?

I hate to ask you for another pic, but do you have one of the whole unit?

 

[Reefaquariumnut]

 

[Reefaquariumnut]

Here is the full shot of the reactor...Red is gas line, blue is water line (you probably already know that).

The next shot is of the water and CO2 into the reactor.

This one I am not so sure about...I know the blue line on the top of the reactor is the reactor fluid (effluent) output and I dump that into the refugium. The red on actually goes down to the pump. why, i don't know. I never spoke with scott on this reactor, ever.

***There is a pipe in the bell (top of reactor) that i think the water flows up and out of...when I close the gas valve on the bell the bubbles stop, but the water level then stays below the pipe and thus no fluid comes out of the RO line.

I do not know why he would have a gas line on the top of the reactor and why he would have the gas line feeding into the Eheim pump (like a venturi)...Maybe i set it up wrong, but what would go into the pump JG fitting then?

 

[Reefaquariumnut]

This is when the gas valve is "off", so you can see the pipe much better.

 

[Reefaquariumnut]

Maybe by the end of this week, I won't have anything left of Scott's...LOL ~

 

[jnarowe]

OK, thanks for the pics... first and foremost, that neck is bizarre. I can understand the idea of corraling the CO2 for recirc, but that is a bit much. The theory is to recirc the CO2 so that it DOESN'T build up and cause a problem.

My gut feeling is that the CO2 feed should be going into the inlet on the pump, and the recirc should go from the top to where you currently have the CO2 Feed. Try that, lower your bubble rate a bit, and see what happens. It just seems that the reactor is built a bit more complicated than it needs to be.

I can post pics of mine, which utilizes recirc but it is a complete recirc of the water column, where the pump draws off the top and pushes it up through the bottom.

 

[jnarowe]

another note is that I just plainn don't like the way the water is pumped through it...I guess that's the same discussion, but you really can't "move" the water that is trapped in the neck.

If you can't get it to work, you are welcome to send it to me and I will mod it and send it back. Plenty of people on RC would do that for you I am sure.

 

[tgunn]

Yeah, the point of the red line at the top is that any CO2 that does not dissolve gets sucked back into the pump and recirculated through the reactor.

In my reactor I'd get at most a 2" diameter little bubble around the recirculation intake like that. Having that much air at the top is definitely part of the problem.

When you started up the reactor, where was the water level? Was it right up to the top, filled up right to the red recirculation line?

If not I'd suggest trying to shut down the reactor pump and CO2. Make sure the reactor is filled right up to the very top with tank water. In you have to disconnect the red line from the top and dump some water in that way, give it a shot.

Ideally there should be very little CO2 that has to recirculate.

I agree with Jonathan, the red line from the top should some how be going to the intake of the pump; it looks like it's on the output. The idea is that the suction of the pump sucks the CO2 that collects at the top of the skimmer into the pump.

Tyler

 

[Reefaquariumnut]

At one point the water line was all the way up to the gas valve on the top of the reactor (and hardly any bubbles)...I thought it was acting wrong because i always saw it bubbling. So I did some adjustments and the bubbling started again.

I will see what happens when i change up the red gas lines and post it in a few minutes.

 

[Reefaquariumnut]

Well Jon and Tyler, Maybe you guys were on to something...

I switched the red gas lines and the reactor body has very little to no bubbling! Sweet. Also, the effluent is much easier to control and i have a nice fast drip occuring. Sweet. Lastly, the air pocket in the "bell" is still like 4", but maybe this will decrease over time...I decreased the BPM on the regulator bubble count to like 60BPM. I will go to bed and see what happens. My pH is a little high right now (8.48) so hopefully the reactor does it job and brings that down.

Jon, what did you think about the coral pictures? Anything I should be aware of?

 

[tgunn]

Good to hear that the reactor seems to be working a bit better; it'd be a shame to have to buy a new one.

What are you feeding the reactor with again? Just a split off your return pump?

About the coral pics, keep an eye on the tissue recession at the base of your corals. I've had some corals where that happened and the coral kept on growing happily with no problems. However I've had it happen where the bottom half of the coral loses tissue and then the dead branches get an algae bloom that starts to choke out what's left of the coral. Some will say to frag off a piece of the coral "just in case", but my experience has been to just leave the coral and not stress it by fragging it. If it's going to live it's going to live.

The bubbles on the rocks are probably from algae that's starting to grow on your rocks; the bubbles are oxygen from the photosynthesis. I always found that the lighting in my tank made algae growth tough to see (so bright and so blue). After lights off try using a flashlight in the tank to look at the rocks and look for green patches; you may be surprised at what you see.

Tyler

 

[Reefaquariumnut]

I have it running off a 1/4" line from my barracuda return.

I will keep an eye out for the algae, even though I haven't seen any yet.