Switching over to Calcium Reactor suggestions????

Scubabum · Jan 2, 2019

Happy new year everyone. So the time has come and I've decided to make the move over to a Calcium Reactor. Currently I'm dosing the AquaForest "balling Method" tank is stable and overall growth and color is impressive. As most of us know, tanks like stability and consistency. So I pose the question. Should I continue to dose and cut my dosing down as I make the switch or just shut the dosing pump down and tune in the reactor? The guys over at BRS suggested taking it slowly and a few of my friends that made the switch just turned off the doser and switched. So looking for input from any of you that have made the switch. Thanks in advance.

d2mini · Jan 2, 2019

IMO you can go either way. I think I'd just do the switch cold turkey, but test ALK twice a day in the beginning.
Doing it this way should get you dialed in quicker than if you are trying to manage two separate systems, decreasing one and increasing the other.

LouieP · Jan 2, 2019

Set up your CaRx and manually dose until you get it dailed in. Remeber with any change it could tick off your corals for 6-8 weeks. Test multiple times a day & at the same time of day and manually dose any shortage.

Dont rely on your CaRx to increase Alk, Ca or Mag. Use it to keep it stable.

JDtimk · Jan 2, 2019

When I switched to a calcium reactor from two part dosing this is what I did.

I kept the two part dosing up at normal frequency and set up the calcium reactor with a near unbroken stream of effluent and a pH of 7.5 in the reactor. I let that run for awhile and then began to increase the pH in the reactor slowly and tested the effluent and the tank DKH. As the tank DKH began to rise slowly I would back down the dosing frequency to maintain the tank target DKH.
I completed the transfer to calcium reactor only over the course of one weekend with some fine tuning over the next couple of days. The tank DKH stayed real stable.

I also liked the fact that using that method I was able to find and workout any issues with getting the calcium reactor up and functioning without compromising the tank stability.