DIY phos reactor

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

evil Nick

Aquarium Advice Addict
Joined
Oct 9, 2014
Messages
1,231
Location
CT
I put this in the wrong forum originally (the equipment portion)

I recently built a DIY phos reactor out of a filter canister, refillable DI container, and a standard aquarium pump.

This is what it looks like.

Im wondering a couple things as the media isnt tumbling at all (though it didnt tumble much in the real phos reactor my buddy lent me).

1) how does the water flow through these canisters. Does it flow in through the cartridge area down then around and back up through the outer shell in the sides? Or does it flow down the side then through the bottom of the DI resin cartridge up through the center?

2) if its flowing down through the DI cart is it still working as it would still be pushing the water through the phos pellets? Is tumbling REALLY that big of a deal here more than jut flow?


One last question would be would putting some carbon in there be a good idea as well? Is mixing them in the same assembly a bad idea or fine?

Ive seen a video of someone else who made this and he didnt even use a DI container in his. He just plopped the phosban in the bottom of his cartridge and lets it tumble like that. I would do that by my concern would be phos pellets actually getting in my tank, unless I used some filter floss to block it?


Thanks

heres the video of the one Im talking about.

 

Attachments

  • IMG_20170723_174436.jpg
    IMG_20170723_174436.jpg
    232 KB · Views: 104
heres my reactor working! I had to pull it apart once already because there was this thin piece of fiber material on the base of the DI cartridge that clogged up so bad it was blocking everything for god knows how long. I ripped that out and just put the cotton filter piece back in. Im going to get some kind of screen though and pull those out of it as well. I also threw some filter floss on there since I have a ton. Helps me monitor how gunky things are getting and cuts back on some of the flow.
I also bought a couple 3/4 IPT X 1/2 barbed 90's to replace the straight fittings to cut back on the over all footprint of the setup.
It works great, its hard to see the tumble in the video but its there.

https://youtu.be/tKadZnnr82s
 
just an update. Went to change the phosban and when I opened this thing it smelled like dead fish. The cloth filters and filter floss were disgusting and must have absorbed every nasty particle going through it. Probably a good thing until it got this bad and then who knows how much trash it was really polluting the water with.
decided to remove all the filters and replace them with a plastic mesh.
the only problem I have is I need to start filling the thing with water before putting it back because the time it take to push all the air out of the thing is crazy. I think that is an easy fix though.

Seems to work well and was alot cheaper than most decent reactors. 20$ in parts if you already own a pump, if not then its about 13$ in parts minus tubing (that is all up to how much you would need).
 
It's black pond tubing from Lowe's but I forgot what size honestly. The pump I'm using is an adjustable 150gph but 80 is more the gph you'll want and those are cheap
 
Back
Top Bottom