Reactor Media and Changing it

[EmilyB]

How often should one do this?

My reactor is pretty big, I think I put in three ARM containers about 16 months ago....it is still quite loose for the most part. Lots of bubbling in at least half of the media in the last section. There is no discoloration or anything.

How do you know when to change the media?

[Delphinus]

I find after about a year enough of the media has broken down to the point that it works its way into each other. So the "feel" of it and the "look" of it hasn't much changed, but the pump has to work a lot harder to push water through that, and that seems to create secondary "issues", such as blockages (pressure building up in some areas, possibly leading to leaks).

Anyhow so far I've found it best to change the media out, outright, sometime after a year's worth of use, rather than just keep topping it up indefinitely. Other people may have other experiences though.

[medican]

Not that I have one, but this is what I have learned about the reactors:

Its usually recommend changing media when it either dwindles down to about 1/3 of the volume in the chamber or if when doing maintenance, the media feals like mud or mush. If when doing maintenanace it still feels "gritty" like it did when it was new, top off the media, if it feels like mud, replace 100%.

Hope this helps.........

[EmilyB]

Curious, what kind of maintenance does one do, since I haven't had to do anything with it ever so far.

[Canadian Man]

You have to maintain them?

I just keep topping up my media. My reactor uses 6 containers of arm so to change it all would be $$$$