So it's 2010 now. Who still uses a calcium reactor and who's all on 2-part dosing?

[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by MitchM

How do you add carbon to a ca reactor?
Carbon should be changed out after 3 weeks or so. That just means more frequent maintenance to the reactor.

Mitch

I agree Carbon should never be put in the reactor as you would have to dump your reactor media to change the carbon which is a huge waist.

Steve

[Myka]

In the end I think it all comes down to money when the "set and forget" feature is added.

Originally Posted by StirCrazy

well I account the consistancy of the bubbles to a few things, the first being a large CO2 tank. smaller ones run out faster and you pressure starts to drop a while befor you run out so you end up getting more variation. a larger tank that stays at pretty much its full volume and will give you 1.5 to 2 years worth will be a lot more constant.

the second thing which may have more of an impact than the bottle is the regulator you are using. most of the ones being used in this hobby are true garbage. the cheepest offshore thing they could find as a good regulator would cost more than the reactor. for example a new version of my regulator would be about 350 to 450.00 retail.

as for keeping up with demand in the tank, pure size matters, most places were touting reactors that held 1 jug of media for tanks up to 200 or even 300 gal tanks, with a add on stage up to 4 or 500 gal. they had small pumps, most had no recirc for trapped gas, ect.. the one I designed was big, 4 jugs of media when full, 500 gph recirc with in the unit, gas bubble evacuation, plus a built in water reserve. I used a combanation of high flow and acidic water to desolve minerals. it was big, had a 12 X 20 foot print for the box with two 6" wide towers on the top that were about 12" tall so overall high was about 18".

Steve

Hmmm, very interesting. Thanks for elaborating. The cost of this thing would be rather substantial though I would be thinking (much more than a basic reactor or dosing system), and take up a lot of real estate. The "set and forget" feature is pretty sweet though. How often were you testing parameters? What variance did you find in that time?

Originally Posted by marie

Unless you are using some 2 part I know nothing about then I assume you have the same fiddling.

Oh you bet! I fiddle with my dosers at least as much as I fiddled with my reactors in the past. I think this dilemma in both methods would be significantly reduced provided a controller is used. I have never run a controller. I prefer fiddling with the dosers than the Ca reactor simply because each parameter can be fiddled with separately. I always found alkalinity to drop quicker than calcium when using a reactor - I was always dosing alkalinity separately.

[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by Myka

Hmmm, very interesting. Thanks for elaborating. The cost of this thing would be rather substantial though I would be thinking (much more than a basic reactor or dosing system), and take up a lot of real estate. The "set and forget" feature is pretty sweet though. How often were you testing parameters? What variance did you find in that time?

well cost wide, it cost me 100 bucks in pumps and plastic to build the reactor. I already had the regulator, paid 65 bucks for a used co2 extinguisher with a new valve and hydrostat, and say 50 bucks for misc and things I forgot about.. so way cheeper than buying a cheep reactor setup.

I did a full test once a week and never found much of a variance at all I had a tone of SPS which grew like stink, so I was pounding the co2 reactor already so that might be why there was no variation.

Steve

[marie]

Originally Posted by Myka

I was disagreeing with:



Kind of self explanitory, no? I think telling everyone that a calcium reactor is set and forget is misleading as most are not set and forget, although lots of people treat them that way, and don't check their parameters until a crash is visually imminent. Is it ok to disagree with you?

In your case, why didn't you have to throttle it up every couple weeks? Why would your demand stay the same?

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

[PFoster]

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.

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by marie

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

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...

[Delphinus]

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

[Delphinus]

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

[lastlight]

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