Some random coral pics

[Delphinus]

Originally Posted by marie

I wish they would rate aquarium equipment accurately. The reactor is supposed to be good for a 200g system unless it is heavily stocked and I didn't think my tank was even close to being heavily stocked yet

I sorta agree with you for the most part, but I tend to believe a reactor is something that is adjustable to the situation. If it's not keeping up the levels, that to me is more a sign of it not being dialed-in. Ie. it's a function of how it's set, not it's size or rating. I've run many different reactors and the one key thing I can take away from the experience is that the major difference between a large reactor and a small reactor is how much media you have to buy in order to fill them up (and how much CO2 they consume to get the pH down in the reaction chambers). So if it's not keeping up the levels, it needs to have its flowrate increased and the CO2 adjusted to maintain a pH of 6.7 (or whatever your setpoint is) at the new flowrate.

A smaller reactor will simply run out of media sooner. If you find you're replacing media too often then a larger reactor might suit your needs, but a larger reactor won't service your tank any better than a smaller one would.

I found with my systems I would have to replace my media about once a year anyhow, because after a while it just gets kinda mushy. My largest reactor takes 4 containers of ARM to fill, whereas my smallest takes about 1/3 of a container. So roughly $120 versus $10 from empty to full. But both can be dialed in to my tank. Oh I also found I needed about 160 bubbles per minute on my larger reactor versus about 80 bpm on the smaller reactor, *at the same flowrate*. So all the larger one was doing for me was costing me more. I don't run that one anymore and I just generally use it to scavenge parts when I'm DIY'ing something else now.