BRS Reactor not tumbling GFO well

Marineland pump? Mine does the same thing. If you pay close attention to the one side that's tumbling, the other side gets slowly sucked in. In other words the whole surface is tumbling, but only one corner really shows it because the water has found the path of least resistance. This is just my case... Take a closer peek and tell me if that's the case for your reactor
Also, it shouldn't tumble a whole lot, due to excess wear and tear on the GFO. It ends up creating tiny particles that are released into the water, so a slow tumble is best IMO.

 

Check the level of the reactor. When I pull the bottom of canister away from the wall it would all tumble. Might just need to put a spacer between lower end and wall

 

check and make sure the sponges arent clogged with junk too.

 

How much GFO media are you using? Make sure you have the right amount (Bulk Reef Supply has a calculator for this). Perhaps you have to much media in there.

If you don't have a ball valve on the effluent end then perhaps install one. You can then adjust the flow of water through the reactor.

Otherwise I agree with the other posters....reposition your pump, level your reactor on the vertical and horizontal plane, and clean the sponges.


Personally I am not a fan of the BRS duel reactors. I don't think you get enough flow through both reactors to make them effective. I used to run carbon and GFO in one of them but have since sold it and went to separate reactors for each. I am much happier for sure.

 

Use a MaxiJet 1200. Make sure your valve is opening fully and not getting clogged with crap.

 

You don't want it to tumble like crazy, just a steady tumble, so you probably won't need the valve all the way open. In my case with my maxi 1200 I run the valve at half and get a good tumble, but I've found out if you get too much of a tumble it creates small particles that gets released back into the water due to the GFO crashing together

 

The fun part about throttling that pump back is the back pressure your putting on the pump will likely burn it out twice as fast

 

Are you talking bout the maxi jet 1200 glaspie? Yikes!

 

Any pump that has a valve that's half shut is putting back pressure on the pump and is more than likely going to burn it up far faster than normal, if your going to throttle a pump back it should be tee'd off to prevent this mike

 

i always thought restricting the inlet of the pump was a major problem, and if you valved the outlet it wouldnt be so bad. The pumps dont seem to be running any harder or anything. in fact they seem to "quiet down" and run smoother. This is my experience with a return pump not a utility pump. but common sense to me  would say to tee it off and bleed out any back pressure.

 

Not sure whats going on with the GFO not tumbling but in regards to the pump being throttled back ...I am a memeber of 3reef, and a memeber there is a water flow guru because that what he does for a living, with the local water or something. ( cant remember his actual role). Anyway here is what he said about throttling pumps back..

AZDesertRat:

Never ever restrict the overflow! You control the flow rate with a ball valve on the discharge side of the return pump and the overflow self adjusts to that flow. Adding a tee to the discharge side of the return pump is not a very good idea. Centrifugal pumps draw only the watts or amps required to do the work at hand (plus a little for electrical inefficiencies) so returning flow to the sump uses more power than throttling the discharge flow with a ball valve and leads to hotter water and higher power bills. This is easy to demonstrate with a Kill A watt meter. The throttled pump wil draw less wattage than the pump returning flow and will be operating cooler. It will also last longer contrary to popular belief.

and the original thread if you want to read, he has more info in later posts about the issue.

http://www.3reef.com/forums/filters-pumps-etc/overflow-box-issues-126969.html

 

heres a very good quote from the other thread for the lazy folks

Many municipal water utilities used to install pressure relief valves on their booster pump systems in the old days when power was cheap. The problem is your pump is producing 320 or whatever GPH when all it really needs is 200 GPH so drawing the wattage to produce that larger amount. The pump is actually working harder, drawing more power since it is pumping more water and is producing more heat. To understand what I am talking about you need to understand two principles or hydraulic theory, Bernoulis Law and the Laws of Affinity. Both have to do with centrifugal pumps and how they operate.
Basically what it amounts to is a centrifugal pump can actually become more efficient when you add head to the pump via additional head. Additional head can be added via a restriction on the return such as smaller diameter piping. fittings, valves, additional height or any combination of the above. It could even be accomplished by lowering the speed of the pump but for our uses that is not an option. Additional head in no way hurts the pump since it is actually doing LESS work so can even extend its life.
Returning flow to the sump does just the opposite. The pump is stil producing the maximum flow, you are just returning it to the sump or wasting energy. Since it is doing maximum flow, it is drawing maximum wattage and producing maximum heat since they are related..

Its hard to grasp but read up on Bernoulis Law and The Laws of Affinity if you are bored and you will understand better. A Kill A Watt meter can be had at Lowes or HD fo less than $25 and is a really good tool for making an aquarium more efficient, I have cut my power bills by over $100 a month this past year by monitoring my power usage and changing some of my equipment and usage patterns.

 

I guess I'm failing to understand what municipal water systems have to do with a mj1200 and putting valves on aquarium pumps. A centrifugal pump isn't in the same ballpark as a mj1200. Most aquarium pumps have straight propellers and are built to move water not move water under pressure. If you valve it your adding pressure. If I'm wrong I'm wrong

 

I was posting about return pumps, not the maxijet utility pump. I could be completely wrong here, i just wanted to share what I had read about back pressure on return pumps.

 

In regards to the actual issue, I stumbled upon this mod for a reactor. Now I know this is for a biopellets but i think you would be able to do something similar to fix the problem. Unless one of the other solutions fixes it.

http://www.3reef.com/forums/i-made/brs-bio-pellet-reactor-mod-130080.html

 

i understand what your saying, i cant say that one way is right or not. the facts with the killa-watt are hard to ignore, as well as the real life experience that some of the contributers to that thread. i can see it both ways

 

After reading the whole 3reef thread i've come to the concussion we are both on the same page, probably just wasn't explained thoroughly enough. When you tee off the line there should be a valve at the end of the tee, that way you can tune how much is going into the main tank and the back pressure can be released out the tee end. Same deal different style pumps

 

As to your original question, run the output from the reactor into a bucket and open the valve to run a ton of flow through the reactor which will tumble everything and break it all up. Then once it's all tumbling again, adjust your flow until the desired rate and once it runs clear you can put the output tube back in the tank. This is what I do when mine clump up and when I rinse new media, I also run my reactors from my return pump.