easy to use and clean up is a breeze. no regrets buying this item, good investment for my reef tank

I jam this thing with carbon pellets, GFO, whatever I need. It's worked well for me. I didn't buy the GFO separators Two Little Fishies sells but instead took a carbon mesh bag and cut out circles a little larger than the diameter of the cylinder. I put them in between the GFO and sponge. Works for me.The only complaint I have is more of a worry. The little rubber 90? elbows that slip on the top hose barbs cracked after about a month. I swear they will split open and pump the sump dry making the floor, you guessed it, wet. I wiggle these with the utmost caution out of fear. I would recommend either buying a truckload of these OR do what I will do shortly and just plumb the hose directly to the barb fittings in the unit top. If you mount this on a sump you'll have much more freedom with plumbing. Back mounting will put the hose barbs at tank rim height so unless you use elbows the hose will have a rainbow arch.

I bought this because of the great reviews; however, it does not work that great with biopellets. You need to change to the plastic screens instead of the sponges and you need 10x more power on the pump from what it suggest to move the pellets and to not get clumps and crash you tank. What I did to mine was cut a hard plastic ball and place the cut off piece and placed it on the bottom where the intake water hits. This will guide the water flow upward evenly throughout instead of crashing and loosing momentum. This has really improve the movement on the biopellets. Got the idea from a reactor that cost $130. My idea cost me $8 for the ball I cut up plus $48 of the reactor. Lot cheaper!

This is easy to hook up and use. No problems on the operation side. The pieces are a little on the flimsy side, but for the price, I am not expecting something bullet proof. Overall pretty good.

The reactor works great and easy to install. But for cost of the reactor is should come with four secured clips and ties to secure the hoses instead of One of each.

I purchased two of these TLF reactors so that I could run them in series. I decided to run D-Nitrate in One and Activated Carbon in the other to try and bring the Nitrate/Nitrite numbers down in my 75 gallon ref. To early to tell yet whether these two have actually reduced my numbers, but there is no doubt that the water in the tank is now more crystal clear than before. Is it the carbon in the reactor along with less feeding that is clearing up the water cloumn, or is it just the fact that the Reef is now more mature than it was before this installation? Only time will tell how effective these are in reducing the Nitrate level in the reef. As for hooking them up in series, they do require some minor engineering and plumbing alterations, but if you are adpt at working with a refugium, and a somewhat sophisticated sump, this should be a piece of cake. I say should because I have a great plumbing supply house nearby, with a great salesman who will stop at nothing to keep the number of pieces in play to get this running at a minimum. If you only have a Lowes or Home Depot nearby, or a good hardware store, you can generally find the necessary items there to accomplish the task. I would have rated these a 5 "Star" item had I found the inclusion of the necessary plumbing parts included in the original packaging. As far as bang for the buck is concerned, these certainly meet that criteria and i would highly reccommend them to other mixed reef keepers looking to inexpensively add Phosphate or nitrate reactors to their systems.