I added the Aqua Medic 1000 Bactoball reactor

[Xzap]

and it brought my pH down from 7.5 to 7.0 over night
My algae bloom is gone and I'm a happy camper.

Thx,

dave

 

[travis simonson]

That's the same reactor I use. I'm with you, I couldn't be happier with how efficient it is. Plus it looks so cool, makes me want to mount it outside of my tank stand just so people can see it. Got to love German engineering

 

[Xzap]

Hey Travis, do your balls move around ? *lol*

Sometimes, one at the top will spin around, but other than that, they don't.

dave

 

[travis simonson]

Mine are packed in there pretty tightly so I haven't seen any movement

Sometimes, after a water change, I will need to use the valve to bleed a pocket of air/CO2 out of it. You'll hear it making a gurgling noise when it gets a gas pocket trapped in it. I'm not sure if it's too important but I'm guessing it's more efficient without a pocket of gas trapped at the top of the tube.

 

[mrkho]

so its a good reactor? what kind of pump do you guys use? i just ordered mine and im getting it in this thursday and im very excited! i was just planning on running a maxi-jet 1200 on it like it suggested, but wwas wondering if any other pump was good for it?

 

[Xzap]

I use a Mag Drive 2 on mine.

Thx,

Dave

 

[travis simonson]

I just run mine inline (on the output side) with an XP3 canister filter.

 

[mrkho]

is it very important to not have bubbles in the reactor? when i turn my co2 off, no bubbles are in the reactor, but when my co2 turns on, bubles are all in it, is that normal? or is something wrong? i tried to open the gas line and just let water flow into the tank, but the bubbles wont come out. any suggestions?

 

[Xzap]

It's working fine. You don't want the bubbles to come out; the balls are breaking the bubbles apart BEFORE the water exits from the reactor so it's OK to see bubbles near the top

Thx,

dave

 

[mrkho]

does hardness of the water affect co2? like if i had soft water 1-3 bps can give me... ( for example 30ppm) but if i had hard water, it would take me 4-5bps to get 30ppm. is that correct? some one once told me that and i think its true, but just wanted to double check

 

[Xzap]

I can't answer that one mrkho.. sorry.

Dave