Buying a gfo reactor tomorrow, help me decide

Its more of a classic reactor design:


The water goes down the central pipe and then up through the sponges. This reduces maintenance by alot and allows you to fine tune your flow rate through the reactor body. I also believe you can run higher GPH through them, although there is no benefit to that for GFO.

 

BRS is up flow. Carbon helps with water clarity and smell, absorbs medicines, organics, toxins..

 

Yep, that's the more classic but the brs do the same thing, they just bring the water in a different direction.

 

So it's looking like either a BRS or Spectrapure dual chamber reactor. The BRS is 60 and the Spectrapure is 80. The only difference seems to be the Spectrapure has valves to control flow.
Is that feature worth the extra $20?

 

Dang, just when things were getting easy I find another thing to consider off craigslist.
GEO 410 Media Reactor for $50
I haven't paid much thought to running carbon before this thread. Does it really help make the water healthier and cleaner for the fish and coral?

 

BRS for the win!!! I have two singles powered by my return pump and love them. Built solid and easy to change media.

 

How do you have them powered by your return? I only have a 650 Gph return pump but that would be way to much for the reactor, right?
If I go with BRS I think I'd go with the dual chamber.

 

Check my 60g build thread...I made a manifold that splits off the return line to power both reactors. First reactor has GFO and carbon mixed and second has bio pellets.

 

The more I look into it, the farther from a decision I am.
NextReef MR1 Complete Media Reactor Kit
Mr1 reactor with the pump for $90 ahhhhh so hard to decide, but my tank really needs gfo soon

 

The Spectrapure is $70 and well worth the difference.
SpectraPure - Great Deals on All your Water Management needs!
Being able to control each chamber individually is very important since carbon and GFO have both different flow requirements and different useful lives. You can shut one off without affecting the other for maintenance as well as vary flows.

For a 150G system you would start out with 7-8 spoonfulls of GFO and eventually work up to 15 spoons over time full dosage if you choose so it does not take much GFO at all. I prefer to run a half dose 24/7/365 as a preventive measure and never ever run the huge quantities BRS recommends unlike EVERY other vendor. I use their products but not their misguided directions.