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If anyone has a calcium or similar reactor and wants to make a nitrate reactor out of it and needs some hand holding I'd gladly give you a hand at the February meeting if you bring your reactor and stuff with you. Just let me know. Carlo

Should not be hard at all. Concentrate on the first chamber and put a combination of porious media and a few sulfur beeds in it (as talked about already). Then in the 2nd chamber (receives water from the first chamber) put in the calcium media (to help bring up the pH). Carlo

It really won't make much difference how it's recirculating so that unit should work just fine. Don't try and over due it with the flow rate (as you already found out). Just test the output water for nitrates and adjust your flow based on how well the unit is reducing the nitrates. Carlo

Dan, for the life of me I can't remember what it was I did. I've looked and the only thing I can see I did was the crossover cable. For kicks and grins I plugged it into a Red Sea Deluxe ozone unit and it also read the negative values properly. Carlo

Yep Phyl's comment, BUT it wasn't that I was going to disagree because I think it's more or less what people see when Mg gets real low. I was just biting my tongue from elaborating. :) Carlo

I use a custom built reactor myself so it can handle my water volume. If you're looking for a "Carlo recommendation" on a reactor for the average reefer I wouldn't go with a pump based recirc reactor. They end up being more trouble then they are worth in my opinion. I'd much prefer a unit like...

I use an Aqualifter (3.5 gph) on my kalk reactor too. I was using an SP 3000 (0.8 gph) but it doesn't push enough water for my system and I couldn't keep up with evap (isn't that sad!) and pH. Carlo

Biting tongue big time on ca/mg comment. :) You're probably testing right around 340 on the calcium because they use something like Instant Ocean or Crystal Sea Salt mixes for the in house systems and this is what they are selling you. It's very common to purchase saltwater that is low in...

You lost me Mike on this one. Did he actually mean PPM instead of meq/l? Carlo

I pretty much agree with Phyl on her observations. I too see the same thing. I try and make it a point to suggest to people to start with a kalk reactor and then add a Ca reactor later if/when needed. I personally feel a kalk reactor is a lot more healthy for the system then a ca reactor...

Something is still not correct with your alkalinity reading. Either it's just a type on the message itself or you have extremely, extremely low alkalinity. Please recheck this again and report back the alkalinity. Pay special attention to the decimal place. Carlo

Got my 150s and 300s at Agway. I think the prices were something like $140 and $220 respectfully. Carlo

I used the purple primer on my system setup also but I kept a paper towel roll handy and wiped up the excess immediately after joining the pipes together. I've found if you are fast enough you can wipe the excess away and have a clean look as if you didn't use the purple primer at all. I...

Besides the excellent info DaveK gave I'd want to ask the obvious question. How far apart are the tanks from each other? Generally speaking if you aren't doing a basement type setup OR if the tanks aren't very close to each other it's probably not going to be worth it. Carlo

Yes per PM but I don't want to comment further on the specific media here in the General Discussion forums as it's sort of vendor specific and it doesn't belong here. If anyone needs/wants more info on the media itself just post a thread in the Allquatics forum. I'd rather keep this thread...

I see the Aqualifters failing at about 10-12 months also John and view it the same way as a "wear" item. I try and keep 2 extra pumps on hand for replacements and for general "play" pumps to try stuff with. There are definitely better built (and lasting) pumps out there but it's still hard to...

Probably not really a big deal John. Look at the media and make sure it's not blackish. If not try hooking it up to a bigger pump and flushing it by running the water faster then you normally would. Run 20-50 gallons through it and then give it the sniff test. If you don't have the rotten egg...

Hey John, could you elaborate a bit more on what you mean by you didn't like the results? Nothing really to add, but just curious as to what you observed, Carlo

You can add as much as you need. I typically add between a pound to two pounds at a time depending on how often I fill it. The cool thing about Kalk reactors is that if the "can" is big enough it really doesn't matter to much. For example you could probably fill it 1/4 up with powder and still...

It's very doubtfull there is a problem with the Balast. It's probably more like a 99% chance it's the end cap. I changed out about a half dozen of them last week where I work as they had gotten flaky from heat and bulb changes and wouldn't always fire up correctly. They pretty much are a snap...