well since buying a new reactor of a comparable size would be in the 100-130 range, plus I'd then have to buy a pump, I need to work with what I've got. Though for anyone else who comes across this I definitely recommend either a recirculating design that has large diameter effluent lines, or not going with the recirculating variety at all.
Well my dad had sold his large drill press bus he still had a small desk sized version that was more than up to the job of drilling through the plastic cap. With the bulkhead, valve and fittings Denny hooked me up with at Concept yesterday, I was able to do this:
The inlet line, while larger than the effluent line, is still a pretty small hose, so my flow through is still going to be limited by the amount of water that can be sucked in to the reactor. At least now to clog and shut down completely I'll need to produce enough mulm to block a 3/4 pipe. If this ends up being limited in functionality due to the inlet line, I should be able to modify it to a larger hose as well.