Calcium reactor issue
 

Hey guys/gals, I'm having an issue setting up a calcium reactor. The issue is, when I set my effluent drip rate (let's say 60 drops per minute) 12 hours later it has dropped to about 40 drops per minute causing the ph in the reactpr to lower. I thought the needle valve on the effluent line might be faulty so I opened it up all the way and put a ball valve in line and set it to 60 drops per minute. This was last night, and this morning I'm back to around 40 or so drops per minute. I also unplugged the pump and plugged it back in to see if it would go back to 60 drops per minute but it stayed at 40.

Any ideas?

Pretty common. What happens is the valve gets some calcium precipitate on it and slows down the drip rate. This is why if you can use a continuous duty dosing pump as your feed pump you can make it consistent, but they're not cheap. Yours does seem to be happening really fast though usually it takes at least a few days.

Are you using coarse or fine media? I switched from fine to coarse a few years ago because I found that as fine media dissolved it quickly restricted the flow through the reactor and made the drip rate slow down. When was the last time you pulled the whole thing apart and rinsed out the reactor plus the media? I've also found that I need to rinse out all of the muck that builds up inside at least twice a year to maintain a steady flow rate. Is your reactors input provided by gravity, syphon or a pump? I've found having a designated infeed pump or 'T' ing off of the output of another pump to give me a more consistent flow through vs gravity and syphon.

I'm using a.r.m. extra coarse media in the reactor. This is the first time I'm using this reactor so everything is cleaned out and has fresh media. I picked it up a couple months ago but I had issues with my tank so I never got to fully set it up so I went back to using a doser until I sorted out my issues. I'm using a 400 gph pump I picked up at big als to feed the reactor. I was also thinking about putting a "t" on my gfo reactor pump and see if it helps.

Would it be better if I just raised my effluent rate to a "broken stream" so it doesnt get clogged and adjust my ph acording to the tank consumption?

If you can get it fast enough where it doesn't clog and still have the ph low enough to dissolve the media, that's probably the best option. Just make sure the tank ph doesn't fall too far or the alk rises too much.

The valve could be moved to the influent for more stable results. Also a PH controller measuring reactor ph will solve ph stability issues in the reactor if flow rate varies from time to time.

Try using a drip cup and put your effluent line under the effluent water line. The reduced air will prevent/slow down the calcium buildup


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Look up a cole parmer peristaltic pump this or something similar will fix this issue but not cheap.