dosing or calcium reactor ?

I cant decide if i want to use a dosing pump or a calcium reactor. I have a 120 gallon with sump and refugium ive been dosing by hand and cant get my levels consistent. My questions are which is more cost effective in the long run not up front. Also which one is easier setting up and monitoring. i know if i go calcium reactor im going to need to be dosing kalkwasser. so i just want peoples different views because ive been reading a lot and i think im going to do dosing pumps. also if anybody doses by hand like i do now and has any tips or knows of any good articles on dosing and how other people do it please let me know. i will be getting a reefkeeper lite plus to control everything when i do make my final decision. thanks

Ok I am no expert on either method but from what I understand CAX reactor is more cost efficient in the long run when set up correctly, dosing pump is much cheaper but you go through a lot of supplements. Based on my experience if I were setting up a 120 I would go with a dosing pump. I have one on my 50 right now and I love it. It is well worth the money it costs because of the time it saves you. I have also noticed my levels are totally consistant. But again I am no expert and only can say what I have from experience is that my dosing pump is awesome. dwolson2 knows a little bit about this I think.

From my research, I would go with a CA Rx for a larger tank vice dosing. I have been dosing 2 part for over 2 years now. The Ca Rx is more expensive at first but is cheaper in the long run. With the Doser, I am buying 2 part a couple times a year.

I have to agree, I have a 125 and started dosing 2 part by hand 2-3 times a day. I eventually bought a parastaltic dosing pump and automated it to dose 24 times a day... that was awesome, the parameters were steady and things started to look like I knew what I was doing. now that the corals have started to grow the demand for 2 part has went up. I am going through about a gallon of each every 3-4 weeks, that's getting expensive.

Now I'm searching for a deal in a ca rx because I don't want to keep buying, mixing and refilling 2 part.

with that size tank, I think that a ca rx is going to be better to start off with.

I've been dosing by hand for years. But I've got a large tank so the swings are not that big. My general schedule was to dose Calc on M-W-F and Al on T-T. That worked great when my tank was thriving. I tried a home made calicum reactor but never could get it to keep my levels up. I would also does Alk in my makeup water. I was going thru a 50 lb CO2 bottle at least once a year.

I know others use the reactor and have great sucess. Maybe I just didn't have mine set up right. But I like to keep things simple so I'm still dosing by hand. I use Seachem powdered products in bulk. Reef builder and reef advantage calicum. I'm having a little issue getting this stable once again since redoing a lot of stuff in the tank, but it's coming around. Seems that when I was using Natural Sea Water, I didn't have these issues. I'm using IO now untill UCSB gets their water back on.

From all the research I've done, the 120 mark seems to be the cut off for2 part. It depends on what you will have in your tank. If SPS or Lps,CA r x. If minor amounts of Coral or softies, then 2 part. If you look around, you should be able to find a CA rx setup for only about 100$ more than 2 part. Used of course.

Like Derrick said, 120 is a good cutoff for dosing. Personally, i would use the reactor, I find it easier to maintain and get dialed in. Not only that, but maintenance is every few months, unlike dosing which requires constant makeup of additives etc..

thanks for all the info i think im going to go with a calcium reactor does anybody know of what brand is the best? and how i should dose the kalk shouid i get a reactor for that or dose it in my top off water?? also what media are the people running with there calcium reactor? also does anybody know of any good books or articles or links to good reads on dosing?

For the KALK reactor, it depends on how much you evaporate. If you have a high evaporation rate, have it separate of your ATO. If its low, then combine it. Either way make sure your using some sort of controller with the KALK and CA Rx's. I've snow-globed my tank a few times from OD'ing on the Kalk. I also ran it through my ATO. As for CA rx, the two big ones people seem to use are geo and koralin. Koralin's are cheaper and the geo's are supposed to be pretty nice. One of the biggest things is the regulator. A good regulator is supposed to make a world of difference(from what I have been told/read)
The best two people I know of to ask about Ca Rx are Bvysochin(Bogdan) and Fantastic Frags(paul) They both run them with great success.

Like Derrick mentioned, we run a Korallin C3002, after out growing a pair of C1502's. We also run a Kalk reactor, set to mix for a couple minutes every four hours or so.. All our top off is run through the Kalk Reactor via a JBJ ATO, controlled by our Apex.. I set the Apex up as a fail safe to prevent the possibility of a kalk overdose as Derrick mentioned.. Our Apex also acts as a ph controller for the CaRX. So far, our costs of running a CaRX have been minimal. Kalk is just about dirt cheap as well. As far as media, coarse media is more forgiving incase your ph dips too low, but fine media will require less co2 and will allow you to run a higher ph in the Rx chamber. One of the other great things about a CaRX is that you'll be replenishing other trace elements beside Ca and Alk. I never realized that until we actually bought a CaRX..

I don't think our set up is the best out there, but it works well for us.. and our SPS have been really taken off since it went online.. It was a VERY noticeable growth difference. I would be glad to explain our setup to people at the next meet..

Ray, something must have been very wrong with your setup.. A 5lb Co2 bottle should typically last approx. a year, maybe 6 months at the least, unless you're really melting some serious media.

100

Scotty,

what does "100" mean?

I switched over to an AquaC RX-1 reactor about a year ago, best decision I have made in a long time. Easy to use, setup, and clean. Plus it holds a ton of media (like a whole canister of coarse ARM media). I also run a Kalk reactor on my system. I run it a tad different - instead of running it through my ATO though, i use a peristaltic pump to dose at 1mL/min constantly, this keeps the pH up but does not tie it directly to my top off which can fluctuate over seasons and change the chemistry of the system a bit.

I have heard (from lots of reefers) that the Korallin reactors are really hard to dial in and get setup right. Bogdan/Crystal - did you experience this? That was the main thing that pushed me away from them.

Ray - I personally go through about 10lb of CO2 every quarter, but I also have a very high Ca demand. A normal 120 with a fair amount of SPS would go through a 5lb tank every 8-10mo. Something like your sized tank would probably go through faster, but unless you were stacked with LPS and SPS I cant imagine blowing a 50lb tank in a year.

At the time I was running the reactor, the tank was heavily stocked with some large LPS corals that were calicum eaters. I had a Pagoda coral that was about 9" across and the skeleton was at least 1" thick with the bottom base at 2" in dia.

My reactor held 2 large conatiners of media, one coarse and one fine. It was home built. About 4" in dia and 30" tall. My bubble count was almsot 1 per sec. Jimmy now has my old reactor. Not sure what he's going to do with it. I know it had some problems and probably a few leaks I didn't detect. If I go back to a reactor, I'll probably buy a comercial one this time for ease.

My bubble count is probably 3/sec. But I use my AC3 to control the actual pH in the reactor effluent so that it doesnt get too low (which is unproductive for the reactor and the tank). I'd imagine if you weren't controlling the effluent or internal reactor pH then you were probably using a lot of excess CO2 and not really freeing the right Ca product that you wanted.

Yea, your probably right. I would check the PH on occasion and adjust but didn't have a controller to control it on a regular basis.

dfladermaus wrote:I switched over to an AquaC RX-1 reactor about a year ago, best decision I have made in a long time. Easy to use, setup, and clean. Plus it holds a ton of media (like a whole canister of coarse ARM media). I also run a Kalk reactor on my system. I run it a tad different - instead of running it through my ATO though, i use a peristaltic pump to dose at 1mL/min constantly, this keeps the pH up but does not tie it directly to my top off which can fluctuate over seasons and change the chemistry of the system a bit.

I have heard (from lots of reefers) that the Korallin reactors are really hard to dial in and get setup right. Bogdan/Crystal - did you experience this? That was the main thing that pushed me away from them.

Ray - I personally go through about 10lb of CO2 every quarter, but I also have a very high Ca demand. A normal 120 with a fair amount of SPS would go through a 5lb tank every 8-10mo. Something like your sized tank would probably go through faster, but unless you were stacked with LPS and SPS I cant imagine blowing a 50lb tank in a year.

Paul, I remember seeing a photo of the aqua c reactor on one of the forums with the chamber completely cracked open. Can't remember the story behind it. It was an interesting image though and really stuck..

As far as the Korallin, we haven't had too many issues. I did add a few mods. The valve to control the effluent, pH port lid, etc. The c1502 used to get clogged pretty easily once I started to really melt a lot of media. Part of the reason though, I believe, was because I was using fine arm media. Since going to coarse media and the taller reactor, its been pretty low maintenance. I would love to try one of the geo reactors though. I usually hear good things about them.

Our first 5lb Co2 bottle lasted about 9 months and we got the bottle second hand.. that's approx. 1-2 bubbles per second and a fairly heavy Sps bio load. I happily paid the $15 for another bottle when the time came.

i have know idea why i posted that "100" @ sisterlimonpot