Calcium Reactors, Yay or Nay?

[Labridaedicted]

I run a big one on my ~360G system and will never run a tank without one. I hate dosing 2 part and it keeps the levels consistent with all the sps consumption of the ca and alk

 

[Maddlesrain]

I broke down the tank and sold off the Acros to move it for a remodeling project. When I set the tank back up, I had dosing pumps and the calcium reactor system. While waiting to set the tank back up, I noticed that many were running two-part on high demand 90 gallon systems. I wanted to take advantage of Randy's newest two-part recipe for a while so I also chose the two-part method. The pH boost interested me.

Right now, demand is pretty low. I like the simplicity of the two-part system. I still have the Vertex if demand increases to the point where maintaining the two-part becomes bothersome. However, after seeing some of the other 90 gallons operating on two-part, I think the Vertex might collect dust until I decide to sell it.

This was the kind of information I was hoping for, to help sway me towards holding off on the reactor until it's more necessary and worth the investment. I don't really mind the two-part, and have a dosing system I'm setting up shortly as well, so I can designate some of the pumps for the two part.

I run a large geo reactor on a 400 gallon system. The one you are looking at is rated up to 300 gallons. it is going to be way overkill even turned down. Your Alk will spike up to 12 -15 in no time and you will have to unplug it. I will tell you that I love running one. Mine runs on a carbondoser regulator. set and forget. The corals love it and grow crazy. I an not sure if you reduce the media that will work or not. If you do go that direction then use 2 part to get the calcium level where you want it and the reactor to maintain it there. Good luck and have fun.

This was my concern as well! I wasn't sure about the reduction of media or if that would cause other issues. I really like the idea of messing around with one and learning to dial it in right now, but I also don't want a catastrophic alk spike.



*** For anyone else voting on the poll: I wish I could edit my post. I wasn't specifically asking if people recommend reactors for my situation, just in general. I added my current setup and my future plans for the discussion and thank everyone for your input!

 

[Sarlindescent]

I ran a CaRx on my IM Nuvo 30 EXT with a 20h diy sump and wall to wall corals for a frag/grow out. Its about the same water volume you are working with. I would consider it beneficial, but there were some quarks. I ran a Kameor fx stp to feed it and ran the feed rate at about 3ml/minute and a ph of 6.7 with old reborn. I did have some times when my alk would swing, but it was over months of not testing after I sold off more than I thought or some corals took off in growth. Most corals didn't skip a beat and alk was as low as 4 and high as 14. I attribute that to the VERY GRADUAL change. (not recommending you allow this to occur)

The problem with running a CaRx on such a small tank is tuning. My way around this was to add the kameor to a smart plug. If I needed to reduce how much I dosed, only run 45 minutes per hour instead of 24/7. Test again and see. Do I think it was worth it....For the price I set it up, yes. If i needed to increase and was already running 24/7, up it from 3 to 4ml (33% increase in dosing) and adjust time accordingly.

I will say, a CaRx is way easier to tune on a large high consumption tank. If you start out dosing 50ml/min and are running hot, adjust to 49 (2% reduction) and retest. With the small tank, going from 4 to 3 is a 25% decrease. That is a significant change, using a very fine adjustment. As such, you need to adjust multiple parameters for comparable precision, for me time and precision dosing.

Last edit hopefully... With the above, I do not think a needle valve would be effective on a small tank. The amount you would need to close it off to regulate down the flow would likely cause frequent clogging and inconsistencies. With a peristaltic pump, I never had any clogging over the nearly 2 years I had it online. The only reason I took it offline, was I had massive die off during a move and do not need more than Kalk atm.