The regulator reliability was the big reason I've never liked reactors. Which do you use? I know the aquariumplants.com is supposed to be one of the better hobby ones but I'm guessing yours is not hobby marketed.

Unless you are using some 2 part I know nothing about then I assume you have the same fiddling.
For me I check my alk every couple of months and if necessary will tweak the calcium reactor
....but then I've been using the reactor for 4 yrs and have it pretty much figured out, if the alk is low, a little turn to increase bubble count and a little turn to increase the effluent and it that's all the tweaking I need to do

I run both (BTW there is no option in the poll for both) but each is on its own seperate system.
My sps system has the Balling method running on it and the LPS system has a dual chamber calcium reactor running on it.

The down side to the balling method is it does need to be refilled and it did take quite a while a testing and adjusting to get my levels stable. I refill the alk every 10 days and CA and MG about every 2.5 weeks. For alk though I have it measured out in .5 kg containers so refilling the alk takes about 10 seconds. But now that my levels are stable its absolutely bang on at all times!

CARX is easy, but not as accurate and not as easy for maintaining the exact params i would like. Plus my 6 month old precision marine reg has dumped twice since i set it up.

Same with mine. I've used it for about 8 years now, and I tweak it when I add media, maybe every 4 months? Levels are always consistent, even with heavy growth. To me, this is set and forget...

Theoretically the fiddling with rates due to increasing demand as corals grow is equivalent between parts dosing and reactors. You still have to test regularly and adjust effluent or dose rates as needed. The nice thing about a reactor was that Ca is always in balance with Alk, so if you were inclined to be lazy, you could theoretically get by with testing just Alk instead of testing both Ca and Alk (still a good idea to keep an eye on both, however). This is, however, with one large caveat: your levels needed to be in good proportions to begin with, if they are not, there is no perfect effluent rate to correct that. So where dosing trumps a reactor is the ability to zero in on one parameter and adjust it independent of any other. But once the levels are "in balance" then theoretically there will be no need to zero in on just one parameter.

So at least from the perspective of increasing consumption rates, it sort of balances out, I think.

What's weird (and adds a little to my "reactor nostalgia") is that I didn't get my perfect target numbers running a reactor, but despite that I did get better growth (when things were at their peak) than I ever did with "perfect" numbers using dosing. So there was some intangible benefit to the reactor that I couldn't quite quantify.

Having said that, it wasn't all roses with me and reactors. The biggest complaint I did have was the constant compaction causing cavitation (wow, can I add any more c words to that sentence??) There was a reason I got out of using reactors, nostalgia always lets you look back with rose coloured glasses and I just need to remember that I switched to dosing, not only because I wanted to embrace the idea of dosing but also because I was giving up on reactors (for reasons other than "I don't have to refill it as often"). Another factor that weighed in was I wanted to reduce my reliance on CO2 because I had a feeling David Suzuki would not have approved of my CO2 usage (I doubt he still approves of my hobby mind you. Darn it all. Oh well. Baby steps.)

Anyhow given the #'s I find it interesting that there are still lots of people who use reactors. This has been a fantastic discussion so far and very enlightening (and thought provoking) so if you've participated, I thank you. :) Please keep it going. :)

@PFoster - actually there should have been an option for both. Sorry if this wasn't clear in my original post but you can actually select both options as this was meant as a multiple choice poll.

cheers :)

On a totally unrelated note, I got my tile up last night. Alas, the dosing vessels are still taunting me with their emptiness.

And still no pics. I couldn't get a clear view of the progress from your basement window last night. Quit leaving me hangin!

gobytron mentioned that dosing setups are in vogue at this point.

I actually think that controllers and dosing pumps have improved a lot in recent years, and that is the reason for their increasing popularity.

How have calcium reactors improved?

Mitch

:lol:How can you improve on something that already works perfectly...

and not to say that being in vogue makes it an inferior technology, just that from my point of view this is why the lopsided usage between the two systems.

The other thing I like about my CA reactor that I forgot about until now is the fact that you can add a little extra media like zeo mag or carbon and reduce your maintenance even more...

My doser is nearly maintenance free and deadly accurate. I trim the fingernails and wash it in the shower.