didn't realize you could use that flexible silicone tubing. thought my only option was that stiff white tubing. the fittings in order to make the silicone tubing work, are KEY! never thought of that. will definitely make that change. the stiff white tubing is very stiff!
Don't tumble the carbon. Thank you for the tip. It was one of my questions. I was going to tumble it. Now I will pack it gently. My goal with the carbon is to see if I can reduce the water changes because I feel like the aquarium prefers more time between changes. It looks best a week after the change, the day that I will do another change and I think two weeks between changes may be better. I have a few complementary ICP kits with coral purchases that I can use to see what is trending in the water.
The most likely cause is detritus building up on the sponge inside of the reactor, causing slower flow. Using less media, but cleaning it out more frequently should help quite a bit.
Your reactor should have come with a canister wrench. If you've misplaced yours, you can pick up a new one here: www.bulkreefsupply.com/wrench-for-reverse-osmosis-canister.html
Im looking into getting carbon and gfo and was going to get the dual reactor but after watching the video I don’t know if I should get it.I have a 55 gallon tank, and if a dual reactor isn’t a good for my tank then what should I use?
Sure would have been nice to hear you say a tank size when you talk about mistake number one. We have a 180 with a big 100 sump. That little guy is good?
For that water volume, you'll likely want to go with the full size reactor. The capacity on the mini isn't quite large enough to run our BRS recommended amount for 280 gallons of water volume. You can play around on the BRS reefing calculator if you want to see how much carbon we recommend for certain size tanks based on the carbon type you go with. www.bulkreefsupply.com/reef-calculator
You might not have quite enough room, depending on how much of each media you're using. Often times, mixing the two medias together is actually easier.
@@BRStv I’ve a Max Nano running rowaphos only approx 2 tablespoons in was looking at adding brightwell purit as well could this work? The media reactor is a IM all in one media reactor desktop
JUNK SICCI WATER PUMP matched with a mediocre Brick-maker. All about $$. I asked for advice but laughed at my issue with a mismatched piece of Junk. Thank you BRS
Once the carbon in the reactor is spent could you use it to feed phytoplankton or macroalgae in a separate tank? or does the carbon just get rid of the nutrients entirely?
The issue with used carbon is that detritus and other "gunk" gets trapped in the carbon's pores. For that reason, we will usually just discard the old carbon and change it out for the new.
@@BRStv With that being the case, wouldn't it be possible to "recycle" the carbon into a separate tank rotation for feeding to phytoplankton? I'm wanting to get into reefing sometime and would like to grow all the food for the fish and corals at home. that being phytoplankton, copepods, and possibly krill.
You can get a silicone upgrade kit at the link below. Silicone tubing is significantly more expensive vs the RO style tubing, but if you want something easier to work with, it's worth the upgrade. www.bulkreefsupply.com/brs-reactor-silicone-tubing-upgrade-kit-bundle.html