why is it that....

[Diomedes]

A cool question.

I feel that reactors are essential on any tank including corals. And it is true that some soft corals can consume calcium at rates greater than some stony corals. A large Sinularia dura colony is so chalk full (excuse the pun) of calcium carbonate spicules or sclerites that they must (IMO) consume more calcium than some typical LPS stony coral spp. and maybe some of the slower growing SPS. These things (S. dura) can quintuple themselves in an 10 month period without a sniff. That means a lot of spicules. Also stony coral skeletons are not solid aragonite. Does anyone know how dense your average Acro is? How much calcium is actually there? I don't know...thats for sure.

I just put a 225 in my wall (with reactor coming) and am going to have only aposymbiotic soft corals for the next couple of years. If I am consuming lots of Calc I'll let you guys know.

Stephen

[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.