For those who run kalkreactors and calcium reactors..

[Delphinus]

I have some of Ben's kalk too (another hand-me-down from someone departing the hobby). I figure I would use up the pickling lime first just because I want to get rid of what I've got first before moving onto new stuff. But at only a few tablespoons into the kalk reactor every 2 weeks it's just taking forever to use it all up. I have a similar problem with PE Mysis, through participation in group orders and some hand-me-downs I found myself sitting on about 30 packages, I've used up a lot, but still have about 20. At my current rate of consumption (I feed mysis to 3 tanks every day so it's not like I'm overly stingy - but it's about a .75" square of mysis split into 3 tanks so it's not like I'm dumping the stuff either), it takes me about 2-3 months per package to use it up. 2-3 months times 20 packages = 40 to 60 month supply I'm thinking I'm going to have to start trading some of this stuff away, it just won't hold that long..

[Delphinus]

Catherine those are rather ideal looking numbers. Man I wish I knew what I could adjust to make mine similar... I wonder if it's a case of too much calcium reactor / not enough kalk? I have the drip rate set on the kalk reactor so that it doesn't exceed evaporation. If I set the pump to 10% or higher of its rated capacity it will overtake evaporation (luckily it's a very slow trend and easy to spot after a day or so, so it's not like I'm in danger of overflowing the sump unless I get VERY inobservant..).

At my old place when I ran both I had the kalk run directly into my float valve. I switched to a metering pump so that I wouldn't have to worry about the valve clogging anymore.

Ok here's my next question, for those with kalk reactors, how often and for how long are you running your mixing pump?