Need advice for external CO2 reactor

[Samuel Lee]

Hi pple,
just got a external Co2 reactor from Chan and I forgot to ask him how to set up the reactor. Anyone can help me with this question, should I connect the tube from the filter to the UV and then to the reactor or I have to connect the tude from the filter to reactor and last to the UV? Tnks

[Simon]

filter->UV->Reactor

I dunno, but I dun think it makes any difference if u do it the other way ard.. see what the rest have to say abt it

[M0rph3us]

hi Samuel, when did u get yr reactor? im looking for one too but chan always dont have.. when u bought it? still got any units left? and also can pm me the price u paid for it? thanks

[PeterGwee]

Morpheus, did you ask Chan personally for the external reactor? It is actually a filter used with water-coolers and mod into a reactor. The price is definitely cheaper than commercial made ones.

[sherchoo]

Please take note of the inlet and outlet hose of the reactor. If you plug in wrongly, the reactor won't work.

[Plantbrain]

You folks have PVC over there?

Adding a 2" ~5-6 cm dia tube BEFORE your Canister filter about 25-30 cm long, attach an 5-6cm to 10-15mm etc bushing to fi the end and out of the canister filter intake hose.
Glue it together and feed the gas into the filter intake.

The tube should be in the vertical position. Cost about 10$US max. Works great. No bubbles get into the canister filter itself as they collect if they don't get dissolved completely.

Ghori Ganzafar (spelling?) has a site with a pic of how to.

You can do a similar thing if you don't use a canister filter or prefer using a separate system by adding a line back to the tank from the bottom of the tube and add a powerhead to the intake to push the water through.

Then there's a similar set up for wet/dry sumps which is very easy and the best design for sumps.
Similar set up with the powerhead but it's all placed in the sump and the bottom of the PVC tube is fed right into the return pump's suction side.

Regards,
Tom Barr

[FC]

Hi Tom,

Thanks for sharing. I planned to feed my CO2 through my filter intake at my next filter wash. However, I am sceptical about the acidified water entering the filter (Eheim 2028, pump rate 1050 L/hr, handling 100 gallons water). If I do that, do you see a problem to the filter's good bacterias?

A question about CaCO3 if you happen to know. In an aquarium, CaCO3 will dissolve in acidified water, what happen to the dissolved CaCO3 if the water becomes neutral after that? Does it bond back to become solid/powder again (and water become soft again)?

Thanks,
Freddy

[Plantbrain]

Are you growing plants or are you growing bacteria?
Some back up for larger fish loads by having a back up besides the plants for NH4 uptake and root interactions, some organic break down is about all I can see bacteria good for in a plant tank. It's good to have a filter than can convert NH4=>NO3 fast. NH4 is bad for plants tanks, low levels of NO3 are good. Typically a well run tank will use every bit of NH4 as it's produced. It gets recycled immediately.

The CO2 level will not be significantly concentrated to hurt the bacteria. It's the same virtually as taking the plant tank with an external reactor on a separate system.
The water perhaps has a few more ppm of CO2 but not much. Unless turn over is very low and the tank large will this be an issue. You can measure the output's pH and the tank's pH at the far end. What's the difference?
If you have good flow from the filter this effect will be extremely small if present at all.

CO2 and O2 act independantly in plant tanks. You can add plenty of CO2 and have high O2 which is the case for perhaps 8-12+ hours a day in the tank. The filter bacteria use O2. The plants make the O2 when there's plenty of CO2 and the other nutrients.
The plants will also poump O2 into their roots so the bacteria down there will also thrive when the plants thrive.

You can have CO2 levels too high for the fish, then the shrimp, lastly the snails but the bacteria will hang on at pretty high CO2 values(100ppm etc) as long as there's good O2.

CaCO3. Well if depends on what form, aragonite(CaCO3) will dissolve at a higher pH than calcite(caCO3). So it dissolves easier. But it's not a whole lot.

Yes, it can precipitate back out but the pH needs to be rather high for this to happen. Around pH 10 to remove it all from solution. This how critters make those CaCO3 shells by creating a micro environment at their mantle surface by adding OH's to the water(from HCO3=>CO2 for PS and OH-) and driving up the pH till the CaCO3 is deposited as the shell.

Try and get the finest grain size you can of aragonite as this will be the easiest to dissolve.

I use CaCl2 and MgSO4 for any GH additions. Cheap and dissolves fast. For KH I use baking soda. You can also use Ca(NO3)2 if you need extra NO3.

Regards,
Tom Barr

[FC]

Hi Tom,

"Unless turn over is very low and the tank large will this be an issue. You can measure the output's pH and the tank's pH at the far end. What's the difference?quot;

That's true. I just made a quick calculation based on CO2 injected to my tank to maintain/compensate CO2 lost. It came out to be only 5 ppm of CO2 injected per hour. In short, the immediate CO2 enriched water would have a max of 0.1 degree decrease of PH. So, my concern about water PH for the filter bacterias is uncalled for.

Thanks.

[modyas]

hi wat exactly does the reactor do? is it to generate c02?
like the nurafin one?

[Goondoo]

----------------
On 3/5/2003 4:29:48 PM

hi wat exactly does the reactor do? is it to generate c02?
like the nurafin one?
----------------

Firstly, it got nothing to do with Nuclear Reactor...

It is basically a device to mixed CO2 and water, pump in from filter before returning to the tank.

[juggler]

Found the article: EXTERNAL INLINE CO2 REACTOR by Ghazanfar Ghori at his nice website http://www.aquaticscape.com/

[Allen_1971]

Errr Juggler,

tom already provided that link in a post in the equipment section[]