[Delphinus]

For growth, alkalinity is also important to softeys. Honestly, the "set and forget" principle of a reactor makes them so attractive to me that I wish I could put one on any tank I set up, be it a 230g or a 20g and whether it be set up for SPS or mushrooms. As far as reactors go, certainly the acylic, the plumbing and the pump are no more major investment than any other component of a setup (e.g., good skimmer), ... even the CO2 cylinder is not so bad ... the bottleneck, I find, is when you add it all up and include the regulator.

Anyhoo that's just my $0.02. Obviously there are some situations where the reactor isn't cost optimal but boy oh boy is it sure nice to not worry about fiddle-faddling and/or adding this or that every 12 hours. The only real drawback is it leads to complacency, I've gone for huge stretches of time without testing Ca or Alk or really anything else in my tanks just because I know the reactor is doing it's job just by eyeballing the bubble count and double checking the effluent output rate every now and again.