Kwyet
After every new tank—“This is my last one!”
In overflow mode, the water level will be at the top of the outflow. When using a controller it’ll likely fluctuate more, with that being the max bubble size.
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Really having a hard time wrapping my head around proper setup on my Yugang acrylic reactor from ARC Help!
- Thread starter okcthunderguy
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JayP
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I stand corrected. @okcthunderguy , Kwyet is right, it likely depends on your kh. We've had so many threads on this topic, it's become challenging to know what's what because we have a number of good minds giving different answers regarding the science. I've gone back and read some of those posts and it might be safer to say "if your kh is 2-6, a 1.0 ph drop will likely put you in the 30ppm range." But I'm going to shut up now and let those chemists chime in.
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- #23
So using a controller, should I expect the reactor to basically fill up with water except when the co 2 being injected forms a bubble and pushes that level down?
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- #24
Totally nderstand that. So many variables at play. So my kh is apparently being buffered pretty low due to my stratum. Like 1-2. So I really should probably run in controller mode and use my controller to taper the injections into the reactor….. I my brain keeps hyper focusing in on the water level and if I set that level by my flow or if the co2 bubble expanding is what drives my water level lower…. Not sure why I can’t picture it.
Kwyet
After every new tank—“This is my last one!”
Mine always has some amount of bubble, even at night. I think it’s because other gases will also come out of the water to fuel the bubble, but they also get purged out during overflow. If you’re using a controller, maybe someone else can answer whether you have to periodically purge it manually.
The reactor will fill more with water when the CO2 is off, and when it is on the bubble will increase with the outflow limiting it to a maximum size. I think you’re worrying a bit too much about the bubble. Many people use the stainless version and they can’t even see the bubble. If you dial in the concentration of CO2 that you want, and it’s staying steady from lights on to lights off, then you’re good.
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- #26
Yeah I’d probably agree. I think what’s thrown me is on initial setup, my fx6 is so strong that it was just making so much backpressure in the reactor causing it to stay full even though the outlet is set at the halfway point on the reactor. Going to rebuild with the bypass sometime next week to drop that pressure
When you have super low KH 0-1, things like pH readings can become unreliable (Joe first turned me on to the idea, and the more I researched the more I discovered the truth of it). For example, even with high quality glass-probe pH pens, if you have zero KH, your pH reading can be altered by other elements, such as PO4 in the water.
The Hanna test kit is also affected by zero KH, as other molecules have a larger effect on the reading (which relies on pH as well). It doesn't make it useless, in fact it's still really accurate at 1.5-2KH or more (I've tested it against a $2,800 Oxyguard CO2 meter). At 0-1KH, the Hanna test kit seems to most often overestimate your CO2 injection. It's hard to tell by how much, but if your test kit says you have 50ppm at KH0, you probably have more like 40ppm. The good news is that it's reliable, so if you aim for "50"ppm CO2 at 0KH with the Hanna kit, that can be your baseline you always try to reach to provide an actual 40ppm CO2.
This is why drop checkers are actually quite useful; their air pocket means they are independent of water chemistry. They will turn the same color in a tank with KH0 or KH10, from my understanding, because it's the CO2 in the water that is equilibrating across the air pocket to turn the indicator color a certain way. The downside is they rely on positioning, can be hard to tell the color of, and are 1-2 hours delayed in their color changing.
The Hanna test kit is also affected by zero KH, as other molecules have a larger effect on the reading (which relies on pH as well). It doesn't make it useless, in fact it's still really accurate at 1.5-2KH or more (I've tested it against a $2,800 Oxyguard CO2 meter). At 0-1KH, the Hanna test kit seems to most often overestimate your CO2 injection. It's hard to tell by how much, but if your test kit says you have 50ppm at KH0, you probably have more like 40ppm. The good news is that it's reliable, so if you aim for "50"ppm CO2 at 0KH with the Hanna kit, that can be your baseline you always try to reach to provide an actual 40ppm CO2.
This is why drop checkers are actually quite useful; their air pocket means they are independent of water chemistry. They will turn the same color in a tank with KH0 or KH10, from my understanding, because it's the CO2 in the water that is equilibrating across the air pocket to turn the indicator color a certain way. The downside is they rely on positioning, can be hard to tell the color of, and are 1-2 hours delayed in their color changing.
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This matches my general experience too. My reactor should only theoretically (according to Yugang's maths) be capable of achieving roughly a 25 ppm CO2 level in the tank when run in overflwo mode, but when doing this the Hanna test shows 30 ppm in the tank. Thats ample for my needs so I am happy.
Here's my homemade one. You can see that the CO2 bubble fills nearly half the reactor. It can't get any bigger because it will burp and overflow bubbles out of the reactor outlet. At night the CO2 switches off, and the bubble shrinks right down, due to residual nitrogen in the bubble (which is not absorbed quickly by the water). When the CO2 switches back on in the morning the bubble grows quickly, until it's maximum size is limited by the position of the outlet (which then overflows CO2 bubbles every minute or so). THis is how running in overflow mode works and is the safest mode as the system simply cannot supply more CO2 without it overflowing out of the system, so the livestock in the tank simply cannot be gassed by excess CO2 if there is a regulator or a controller fault.
I'd really recommend anyone running a Yugang reactor to run it like this if at all possible. Depending on the design of the reactor it may be able to be turned or tilted to adjust the height of the outlet, thus adjusting the potential bubble size to the dissolved CO2 level requirements in the tank.
Sorry to hijack, but how do you make the drop checker indicate 50ppm? Is it changing the solution from 4dkh, or using a different indicator?
We are actually on the same page, which involves corners and tees in fluid dynamics! Yes, in your setup, the proper place for the ball valve is on the reactor side for the same reasons my photos have it on the other side (because the main direction of flow from that tee is where you want the ball valve to control). I like the use of the couplings midway, great idea.
Aim for lime green to true yellow, in most cases. Mine are lime green at lights on, and yellow within an hour.
Surely, however you set up the angles of flow it still must be advantageous to have the valve controlling flow through the reactor rather than controlling flow through the bypass arm of the circuit.
I'm sorry if I appear to be a complete imbecile in our discussion here, but communicating via messaging is not my strong point. I do feel like we are struggling to understand each other. Please forgive my clumsiness.
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- #36
From reading Yugangs very in depth write up… one thing I noticed- after my aquarist (who had never used one of these reactors) had plumbed it in- is that he made the exit of the reactor with a slight slope down. From Yugang as writing, i took it as saying to make sure it doesn’t have a downslope, so any gas bubbles can purge correctly. My guy that did my hard piping said it’s not a problem. Can someone verify one way or the other before I go live on Monday? That exit comes out and then up to the outflow at the tank.
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Kwyet
After every new tank—“This is my last one!”
It’s better for it to slope up, so the excess bubbles go straight out. When it slopes down, then any overflow bubbles will still be trying to float up and will be more likely to be absorbed into the water, negating the safety feature of overflow. If you aren’t using overflow mode then I don’t think it would matter.
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