- Location
- Hicksville
Hello MR, I bought 7 feet of acrylic tube 3" OD in the past that was put away in the attic. I was looking to buy recirculating bio pellets reactor and every time there was one for sale it was not less than 200 bucks and no doubt it was built branded product but again there were few things I wanted to have in the reactor (for example no sponge on top or no need to open or shut down reactor to refill again with new pellets when old ones are consumed. So I decided to build my own. I cut the acrylic tube in half and I used the Little Giant pump that I had bought in the past. Everything in this project is bought from Lowe's and I have used 1/2" pvc unions and couplings and threaded cap on the top. I have used 1/2" tapping kit to tap the acrylic. on the bottom of the tube I have used cheap plastic bowl that I bought from Dollar Tree to add curve on the bottom of the reactor so that pellets will tumble smooth from bottom to upwards. Intake of the pump is on very top as shown in the pictures and in the top lid was also tapped to add union there is tube that comes down 7" which is below the intake of the pump and out put port of the reactor which leads to intake water of my skimmer. Union on gives me benefit of adding pellets while reactor is running which gives me benefit of not messing up with the tumbling tuning I have done and secondly screen which is on the 7" tube that comes down from top lid prevents any free floating pellets from getting out to intake of the pump or out of to my skimmer. Since this reactor is 37" tall I don't have any issues with pellets floating to top. When it is time to refill the reactor again all I do is shut the water feed to reactor and wait 5 minuets and then open the top union and start adding slowly. Of course it takes me 7-10 min to refill again since diameter of the tube is only 1/2" but I don't have to open anything else. This is nothing new to your experienced reefers but I though of sharing this with you fellows. This reactor can be used for purigen as well.
Thank you,
Rav
Thank you,
Rav
