What would you buy? Ca Reactor or Dosing Pumps

[cstires]

I'm looking for opinions on which you would buy, staying away from specific brands, and of course, why? I want to get away from adding 2 part by hand.

My concern with either one is, what if the pump sticks?, what if there is a problem with the CO2, etc...

Before I make my decision I would like to hear from all of you. I just don't want to lose everything in my tank, ya know what I mean? :)

Thanks!

[McCrary]

If you are having to continuously dose calcium then your calcium demands are probably sufficient to warrant a reactor. Kalk dripping is a good way to keep on top of your calcium, but having it accidently drain into the tank can cause alkalinity swings which can really damage SPS.

[atvdave]

If I was you I'd get 2 dosing pumps and start adding Randy's 2 part Ca & Alk supplement system.

[Henry Bowman]

With a Ca reactor if the Co2 regulator overdoses the reactor, the media turns to mush (the low pH will melt all the media) and it'll probably clog the output, thus clogging the reactor and preventing the low pH effluent from entering the tank. With the dosing pumps, if one of the dosers sticks "on" it would definitely screw up the water parameters, although I have never heard of this happening. The dosing pumps in general are pretty expensive and I dont think they fail very often if at all.

I have a geo reactor and run it with a pH controller so when the co2 runs the pH down to a set point, the controller shuts off the valve preventing more co2 from entering the reactor. Before I set the pH controller, I dialed in the reactor so that it meets the tanks current demand, therefore, the pH controller rarely if ever turns off the co2. I think this is better than just basically setting up the reactor heavy and use the controller to manage it. I think when the reactor is set up this way, it is somewhat redundant.

Hope this helps...?

[cham]

A number of quality dosing systems have fail safes that wont allow the pump to run longer than a few minutes. If a pump runs too long it will shut it off. IIRC you can set the amount of minutes before the fail safe kicks in.

[sirreal63]

I prefer a calcium reactor with a ph controller that monitors the effluent ph. when the ph drops too low the power to the co2 cuts off, when the ph gets high again the co2 comes back on. I don't like dosing, it is too much headache. My little reactor keeps up with the 125's ever growing calc and alk and mag demands. I only dose food these days and topoff water.

[humbugy]

i run a calcium reactor without a controller works great

[dougchambers]

We do both off a Neptune Controller...

Our Ca Reactor has a shut-down point if the Tank pH or the effluent drip cup pH gets too low. That way we keep from melting down the media or crashing the tank for low pH.

Our Kalk Reactor is setup with a shut-down if the pH gets too high also. We also have a reservoir slightly larger than what we evaporate in one day with auto-refill so if we ever have a solenoid failure, we don't dose more than what would enter the tank in one-day.

Of course alarms are setup for high and low pH values so I get paged and emailed if things get too far out of wack.

We ran a Ca reactor without a controller for years. I have to admit, it's much easier with a controller. I haven't had a melt-down sense...