Not much to report. Will post tank shots shortly. Been having an ongoing problem with phosphate. Been using NSW, which I tested had a Po4 reading of .17ppm. Also suspect some Po4 is leaching out of the coral sand and rock, which I have recycled from an old tank I shut down. To combat this and future Po4 issues I plan to use GFO. However, with a tank this small I could not find a commercially available reactor that would suit, so I built a nano reactor. Really happy with the way this turned out, I even built two more for other tanks I may use it on (do excuse the grey John Guest elbow, awaiting for white ones to make it look pretty).
The dimensions are 300mm high and acrylic tube is 50mm diameter. As real estate in a nano is so precious i've built the reactor to run outside so hopefully it wont leak. I believe I have taken most precautions in the design of this:
(a)to allow for a better join between flanges (upper and lower plate) and acrylic tube I have recessed a groove in both upper and lower flanges so that the tube sits inside this groove and therefore allows a seal to occur on the outside, inside rim and surface of ends. The cement I used is thick acrylic cement (Acrifix).
(b) used pressure push fitting John Guest fittings, elbows are tapped and threaded with teflon tape.
(b) lid is secured with a rubber O ring and screwed down with 5 M6 nylon screws.
After building the reactor, I have come to realise that with a tank this small I should only use 3 gms of GFO media, which is barely noticeable in my nano reactor. In the pic above I am using half the recommended dose 1.5gms as a starting dose and you can see just how little this is (small patch above the sponge). However, i plan to also use the reactor to house some GAC. So the space in the reactor wont go to waste. Also believe this could be successfully used as a bio pellet reactor.
