I used the small stones that I've collected on the ocean beach and put it in
the gravel based reactor with 301 powerhead. I didn't use any spounge. I
observe complete dissolving of co2 with the bubble rate of 3 bubbles per
second.
This set up works nicely for me. I don't think that those expansive reactors
would do much better than mine. Perhaps if I put some bioballs instead the
stones, it will work a little better since there would be some more
turbulence.

Anton.

"SlimFlem" wrote in message
news:2eAT9.503764$pN3.55674@sccrnsc03...
I have found the gravel vac based reactor is working great.

The reason I say the 301 wasn't strong enough is because the force of
water
it could produce through the large gravel vac tube and through the sponge
cap did not "tumble" the CO2 bubbles fast enough and burst them. What
ended
up happening was the CO2 bubbles start collecting on the inside top part
of
the sponge and just sitting there. When I hooked up the Magnum, these
problems went away. Also, the link you pointed to uses a powehead that
pushes WAY more gph than the 301 does.

jesse

"redled" wrote in message
.. .
The 301 wasn't enough? I was thinking that the 201 I just got might now
be
enough. Oh well, I'll give it a try without a reactor first.

In article W_qT9.499516$pN3.55158@sccrnsc03, "SlimFlem"

wrote:
When I first built my reactor, I tried using an Aquaclear 301, but it
wasn't
near strong enough and also required too much tubing in the tank. I
now
use
an extra Magnum 350 I had as the pump. This works out great. This
gives
my
Magnum new life. I can now run it all the time and use whatever media
I
want to filter with and then the filtered water is injected with CO2.
The
force of the water coming out of the filter is also slowed down some
since
it goes through the reactor and doesn't create any additional current
in
the
tank.

Here are pictures of my reactor, based in whole off of several designs
I
saw
on the net.

http://www.leetsauce.net/~liquid/DIY-CO2/reactor/

Before I built this reactor, I was using the venturi port on a
Aquaclear
201. That seemed to work ok, but I ended up with a bunch of tiny CO2
bubbles all in the tank and a bunch of them collected on the surface
and
just rode the current. With the reactor, there are no more bubbles in
the
tank and my CO2 levels have risen to where they should be, as well as
my
PH
falling from 7.5 to 7.0 over the course of about a week.

jesse



__
"Insert witty comment here."
-John