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BRS Dual Reactor

Good Afternoon All,

I have a BRS Dual Reactor running GFO & Carbon. After two weeks (regardless of media volume), the output depletes to almost a drip. The first to weeks the output is perfect. Does anyone else have this issue? Is it the sponges building up with debris?

Can it run without sponges?
 

Trio91

Administrator
Staff member
Moderator
is it the mini one? i have the mini and im running the same set up. I have the carbon on the bottom and had (no longer using) gfo on the top. in the past i was using that Rox 8 carbon and had issues with the fine sediments clogging up my lines

i have now switched to plain marineland carbon
 

redfishbluefish

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
It sounds like you could be getting some detritus build-up. What pump are you using. I'm using a Cobalt MJ1200 and the only time I had problems with flow was when I wasn't running any GFO and also had no cannister in the GFO chamber. Once I put the empty cannister back in (with the foam pads), I no longer had the problem.
 

njtiger24 aquariums

Officer Emeritus
Article Contributor
Also how do you have it set up? Do you have the GFO in the first chamber and the carbon in the last? Also is the GFO tumbling and the carbon not?

To answer your question you don't want to run it without the sponges cause the media will not remain in the chambers then.
 
It's possible to have flow issues with the unit. Here are a few items to check.

Is the media getting compacted because there isn't enough flow?
Is the media acting as a mechanical filter? How are you feeding water into it? If you using a powerhead pump, it could be sucking in dirt. I feed my dual reactor from the main return pump using a T and valves.
Do you have too much media in the reactor?
 
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