[vincel892]

Hi everyone,

I recently built a pretty big cerges reactor for my 200 gallon and was confused about which direction the water should flow in and out of the reactor. There seems to be a lot of mixed opinions on this and was wondering if there is a consensus on what works better. Right now the water is pumped down along the sides of the housing and then up through the middle pvc pipe.... but Ive also seen/read that people have it in the reverse direction where the water comes in down through the middle PVC pipe, up along the sides of the water housing and out the reactor . Any help would be appreciated.

Vincent

 

[latchdan]

Mine comes in through the top then out the cpvc. Air tries to go up while water goes down. There is an arrow on my filter housing.

Bump: Does the co2 Just fly out the other way?

 

[vincel892]

Mine comes in through the top then out the cpvc. Air tries to go up while water goes down. There is an arrow on my filter housing.

Bump: Does the co2 Just fly out the other way?

Oh wait,, now that I think about it.. the water comes down the sides of the filter housing and up and out the center pvc.. just like yours. The CO2 does get dissolved but I do see microbubbles in my tank

 

[latchdan]

Ive heard if the flow is too strong it will push the co2 out. There are different size housing. Ive ran a xp1 and sunsun 304b On the small size one. The xp1 worked a little better.

 

[vincel892]

Ive heard if the flow is too strong it will push the co2 out. There are different size housing. Ive ran a xp1 and sunsun 304b On the small size one. The xp1 worked a little better.

Oh I see. My housing is 20" tall and 4" wide. The CO2 actually goes through a rex grigg type reactor first before going into the filter housing so the flow is already reduced quite a bit. But maybe my pump is too strong. So I might need to put a valve to control the flow into the cerges.

 

[Turningdizzy]

Oh I see. My housing is 20" tall and 4" wide. The CO2 actually goes through a rex grigg type reactor first before going into the filter housing so the flow is already reduced quite a bit. But maybe my pump is too strong. So I might need to put a valve to control the flow into the cerges.

I am not an expert in this, but, I can offer my observations. In the past, when I have run the CO2 through another reactor before the cerges, I would get alot of micro bubbles. I finally decided that the other reactor was making the bubbles so small that they were swept through the cerges. I figured that a large CO2 bubble would resist the current and try to rise, whereas a smaller bubble just rides the flow and gets swept into the tank. I still have a few micro-bubbles even after I put a bypass in with a ball valve to adjust the bypass flow. My cerges is a small one though (10", I think) and it has a Marineland C-360 pushing on it.

 

[vincel892]

I am not an expert in this, but, I can offer my observations. In the past, when I have run the CO2 through another reactor before the cerges, I would get alot of micro bubbles. I finally decided that the other reactor was making the bubbles so small that they were swept through the cerges. I figured that a large CO2 bubble would resist the current and try to rise, whereas a smaller bubble just rides the flow and gets swept into the tank. I still have a few micro-bubbles even after I put a bypass in with a ball valve to adjust the bypass flow. My cerges is a small one though (10", I think) and it has a Marineland C-360 pushing on it.

Thanks for your input. This would mean getting rid of my first rex grigg reactor... Maybe ill give it a try and see what happens. The only problem is, I kinda use the first reactor as a bubble counter since my filter housing for the cerges is not transparent.