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