april Meeting

Laura and Jim will be hosting the May meeting this Saturday the 12th and it will be the usual of food, drinks, raffle and fun.
 
Doors will be open at 6:00 pm for social talk and the meeting will start at 7:00.  Parking gets a little tight and the city says you can't park on 4th but there is a parking lot a block away.   Meeting is usually held in the backyard so feel free to bring your favorite lawn chair, weather permitting of course.

If you need address/directions, contact a club member.

Best if you park at Mini Mall (where the spaghetti establishment use to be)
 
You will get to see his new frag tank set up in the making.
 
Hope to see you there!

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[Nate C.]

Robert,

Am planning to use the John Guest fittings to connect it to my manifold, but will be running the manifold off the supply line from my return pump rather than adding additional pumps into my already crowded sump.  So, still need to find some sort of pinch or gate valve to regulate the flow through the reactor.

[Robert M.]

I know some calcium reactors use gate vales to control the outflow; however that type of valve is not ideally designed for flow control. In real world applications gate valves are used for turning flow on and off. The valve seat tends to erode away if used for flow control. A ball valve will work well in this application. You can pick up a John Guest ball valve at Home Depot. I think they have 1/2” sizes.

I think the idea of only regulating the inflow on this type of reactor is there is a chance of churning the media to a powder if you regulate on the outflow. One valve is all you need.

Robert

[Les]

I know some calcium reactors use gate vales to control the outflow; however that type of valve is not ideally designed for flow control. In real world applications gate valves are used for turning flow on and off. The valve seat tends to erode away if used for flow control. A ball valve will work well in this application. You can pick up a John Guest ball valve at Home Depot. I think they have 1/2” sizes.

I think the idea of only regulating the inflow on this type of reactor is there is a chance of churning the media to a powder if you regulate on the outflow. One valve is all you need.

Robert

Actuall Robert, most calicum reactors use a needle valve to control flow. For most other flow control applications a gate valve is prefered.  A ball valve used for flow control will only work in the lower 10% of range. After that it's open season. As to the valve seat eroding away that will in fact happen, but only over many many years.

I noticed a comment back in this topic about using a lathe to "dress" the edges of the flanges on the phosban/media reactors for a more "store bought look". Myself and most other acrylic workers actually use a process called flame polishing. That however takes a bit of practice so I opted not to use or demonstrate it during the meeting last Saturday. If you're interested in learning the tricks than let me know and we'll get together and I can show you.

[Robert M.]

I intended to write protein skimmers not calcium reactors, but since the club meeting, I now have reactor-on-the-brain. I was originally thinking about all of the people on Reef Central trying to get there AquaC skimmers working correctly with the gate valve. Most of them seemed to have trouble trying to get the flow just right.

You are correct in that needle valves are the best for flow control, but I have not seen any needle valves in this hobby, excluding CO2 regulation. Looking in the plumbing section of my Marine Depot catalog or DF&S, I don't see any needle valves. Needle valves are great for the precision control of CO2 in a calcium reactor, but I would think it would be prone to clogging in tank water, depending on its purity.

Although a ball valve is not ideally suited for flow control, it still works great in this application. They come in PVC, with barbed ends for vinyl or JG, and they are easy to find.