TLF Phosban Reactor
 

I purchased one of these units (actually 2 of them - J&L had a package deal - 1 to run carbon and the other to run phosban) and it should arrive tomorrow. Will I be happy with their performance?

Mine always seem to partially plug after 14 days

when you close it, make sure the O-ring seats properly, or they will slowly leak.

Other than that, they're pretty decent things.

thanks for the tip shrimpchips!

Fencer, i heard about the clogging problem. Something to do with the sponge not being seated correctly (or something like that). A quick google search should find you the solution

I have two as well and they work great. :biggrin:

For the carbon one, if you're using larger pellet carbon like kent, you won't need the sponge on the bottom, I just use the one on top as I run them full out and don't want any rogue carbon pellets escaping. I find less sponges cut down on the detritus that gets trapped in there. I do use both sponges on the phosban one as it catches a lot of phosban bits that try to escape when I'm first flushing the phosban.

Make sure you restrict flow before the reactor, these things don't like to be pressurized. Everytime I've heard of one leaking its cause people are restricting AFTER the reactor... Which pressurizes it.

Makes sense.. Thanks Binare!

Christy... do you run yours in series (daisy chained is what they call it i think)? If you do, what type of pump are you using. The package from J&L (http://www.jlaquatics.com/phpstore/s...ID=tf-reactor3) comes with 1 MJ400 and they say it will be enough to run both reactors.

If you run em in series, you'll basically have to shut both down to do maintenance on one. You'll also have a hard time getting flow right through both. They will both have the same amount of flow... Different media will require different flow. I'd tee off the pump, then put the ball valve on each outlet, then reactor after each valve. That way you can adjust flow independantly. Maintenance is also easier. Simply turn off the valve for the one you want to remove stopping flow to it, but leaving the other one running. Depending on your media, a mj400 may not be enough for 2 in parallel, essentially cuts the flow available to each one in half. I reccomend pre-filters on pumps feeding reactors as well. The sponge will stop pods n such from getting trapped in the reactors and rotting away inside... Kinda defeats the purpose of running them.

Thanks again, Binare!!

the box arrived this morning and it is all set up. when can i expect to see some results in terms of lowering my phosphates?