Calcium Reactor Question.

Thle009 · Mar 2, 2019

I'm having trouble my tank's alkalinity level stable. I programmed my calcium pump to run for 8 minutes every half hour via Apex controller. Here's the programming for Calcium injection:

Fallback OFF
OSC 000:00/008:00/022:00 Then ON
If pH < 7.80 Then OFF
If pH > 8.40 Then OFF

and activity log.

I also check the water inside the reactor and the alkalinity is 14 dKH. My ATO also add about 2 gallons of DI water per day. My tank's alkalinity keep drifting lower. What am I doing wrong? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hemmdog · Mar 2, 2019

I’m not sure myself, but @ca1ore and @jda have had a lot of success with their Calcium Reactors. They leave theirs on 24/7. Hopefully they will chime in with some suggestions for ya.

jda · Mar 2, 2019

I don't know what much of that apex pseudocode means, but if you are going to control the reactor with a pH probe and a solenoid, then the output will not be as constant nor as much as you can get with other methods.

If you are willing to learn how to tune the reactor and just have the pH probe there to monitor and alert, then let me know and we can help. I recommend learning how to tune, testing only the effluent dKh and letting it run 24/7. After this, then you can hook up the pH probe to your apex, or whatever with some wide parameters and have it alert you if something goes outside of these levels - this is not necessary to have it run, but it makes some people feel better. If you want to go this route, let us know what kind of reactor that you have along with your regulator and pump.

I wrote a bunch in this thread, which has helped a lot of people. It is a lot though, sorry.
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/calcium-reactor-cant-keep-up-with-alk.484529/

kevin_e · Mar 2, 2019

Let it drip 24/7. Set the Apex to monitor high or low extremes or cut if necessary. The effluent ahould be dripping non stop. Having it dose in periods will cause instability.