kalwasser reactor vs Calcium reactor !!

[lsingh]

i am setting up a 55 gln sps heavy tank. need an advice on setting up a kalk or calcium reactor. I have used both over the years together and had good results on larger tanks. i have seen few mixed reef tanks locally thriving only of kalk dosing and everything in them is doing just fine as it should. how ever i am not too convinced just to setup a kalk reactor instead of calcium reactor. Would like discussion on this topic as my tanks total volume is going to be around 60 to 65gln.

[thegrun]

For a small 55 gallon tank I would opt for two part. Kalkwasser will not keep up with the demand of a heavily stocked SPS tank and to me at least it seems like a calcium reactor is a little too finicky for a 55 gallon tank.

[LobsterOfJustice]

Personally, I like automated two-part because it lets you adjust Ca and Alk independently. I am definitely NOT a fan of kalk in the ATO - If I ever use kalk it will also be via dosing pump. Calcium reactors can be hard to fine tune - you can open up the needle valve "a hair" but you don't know how much more that ends up dosing.

[barjam]

2 part. I hate kalk and especially hate kalk reactors.

[dkeller_nc]

For a larger tank, I'd suggest both. The kalkwasser will keep the tank's pH from being depressed from running a calcium reactor. One of the more highly functional LFS that I've ever been to runs their huge display tanks in this manner, for that purpose.

But if you're going to do a calc reactor on such a small tank, I'd suggest changing a couple of things on a typical reactor setup to give you finer control and more stability. Use a peristaltic dosing pump to feed tank water to the reactor instead of the more typical centrifugal pump and needle valve. Use a 2-stage CO2 regulator rather than a single-stage regulator to ensure stable CO2 input to the reactor.