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Peristaltic pump


shaywood

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Okay, I'm sitting here having worked with a new calcium reactor for about a week. I'm frustrated with the difficulty and adjusting the affluent flow from the needle valve. I have heard discussions about peristaltic pumps on the Forum. Can anyone recommend some links to peristaltic pumps that are halfway affordable? Here's one mentioned on eBay. Would this work with an Apex controller?

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/MILWAUKEE-MP810-PH-LIQUID-DOSING-PUMP-3-8-GPD-PERISTALTIC-AQUARIUM-MARINE-REEF-/121705183480

 

 

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Well I guess I should have thought about that a bit more, you would need a much higher ml output for something like that I would assume. Thinking a 1.1ml would be a bit too slow (I was just point out good priced peristaltic pumps as you requested) That Milwaukee may not be what your looking for either as from what I have seen in the past is that it needs to be variable, I'm sure someone around here has a setup and would have a good idea of what pumps would work.

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None of the aquarium peristaltic pumps are designed for 24/7 duty. They will burn up quickly. Like mattv says, used cole palmer medical grade pumps are good for this. I'd recommend researching on r2r to find significant amounts of info in this


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Forgive my ignorance, but why woukd you need a pump with a calcium reactor?

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You need something that controls the amount of water that enters (and therefore leaves) the reactor. This is in addition to the water circulating within the reactor itself.

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A pump to feed the reactor.

A pump to circulate the reactor.

And a needle valve to control the outflow.

The pump to feed the reactor, just runs 24/7, it doesn't need to be controlled. I just have an air line tube run off of the chiller pump to feed the reactor. The needle valve/effluent rate determines how much flow goes in and out. A ph probe on the effluent determines if flow needs to increase or decrease.

What difficulty ate you having?

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9 hours ago, pdxmonkeyboy said:

Ahhhh got it. Do most people use a perstalic pump?

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It's a mix - some use a small feed line off a larger return or other pump (chiller feed). Others use a small dedeicated fixed flow pump and some will just siphon from main tank (not generally recommended).  Those setups will all normally use a needle valve or similar to control the feed rate and hence effluent flow out of the reactor. The challenge there is that the valves can be hard to dial in and will start to plug - giving you uneven flow and hence unstable all/calcium. This is why you see a lot of folk using peristaltic pumps. Getting one that is designed to run reliably 24/7 however isn't cheap - typically need to go for medical or lab grade equipment. 

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For my 30 gallon Nano, I had a dickens of a time dialing in the affluent drip rate at a couple of drops per second.  But my solution was to increase the flow rate to 15 ml per minute while raising the pH to 7.0 in the reactor.  Now the flow is steady and consistent.  

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