Flushing a dual reactor? (Rinsing GFO & GAC)

[STiTCH87]

I'm going to be setting up my BRS Dual Reactor tomorrow and wanted to ask someone about this.
I have a 5 gallon bucket of RO/DI that's halfway with water.
I was planning to put the pump in there as well as the outlet tube until the water in the reactor and exiting the outlet were both clear.

Will this work, or will having the pump pumping the dirty water in the bucket just keep things from clearing?

I really don't want to have to pump water out of one bucket and into another. There's just no way everyone does that...
And i've read about people rinsing it in a tub or sink but I don't feel like that works since it's not a pressurized system like the reactor is?

Suggestions?

Also, I read that when you start out to use half the GFO that BRS recommends. Is this also true?

 

[MrX]

I started with about half of what they recommended, as you mentioned.

To rinse it I had the pump in my sump and directed the output into an empty bucket until the water was clear. I had the extra water volume so I could afford to lose/use some up, plus I was about to do a water change anyways.

Didn't seem to take more than a couple minutes to clear.

 

[STiTCH87]

Yeah I was just thinking I may just do it tomorrow with the water change the way you mentioned. Problem for me though is that removing any more than a half gallon from my setup tends to make the pump come close to running dry since the chamber the return pump is in is so small. I may remove the panel I put in for a refugium to increase that water volume since I never did end up going with the whole refugium plan.

Thanks again btw!

 

[Docstach]

I started with about half of what they recommended, as you mentioned.

To rinse it I had the pump in my sump and directed the output into an empty bucket until the water was clear. I had the extra water volume so I could afford to lose/use some up, plus I was about to do a water change anyways.

Didn't seem to take more than a couple minutes to clear.

That sounds like a better idea than I do, but I mainly rinse in a bucket before putting it in the reactor so the initial flush doesn't clog the foam disks. Maybe I just got an extra dusty container of GFO?

 

[STiTCH87]

I ran the reactor circulating in a bucket of 3 gallons of RO/DI for about 2-3 minutes til the water in the canisters was clear then transferred everything over to my sump and it's perfect. Zero dust exiting the reactor.

The tank is looking damn clear too. Very surprised how quickly I noticed a visual clarity improvement (about 2 hours of running).

 

[dcforester1]

I have a fine mesh strainer that I put my media in, and just dunk it into a bucket of RO a couple times, then once in the reactor, just let it run thru and dump the water. I have about 150gal of water so I usually just add a couple extra gallons before I do this.

 

[vp6799]

When changing out the media, I just rinse out the media in the cartridges with tap water.