calcium reactor for christmas!!

WILDTHING

New member
Woo Hoo I've been promised a Calcium Reactor for Christmas!!

I know NOTHING about them except I think my tank will do better with one, does anyone have a suggestion about a good one, and where to buy it? What features should I look for etc.

colleen
 
reeftek or geo. i'd also consider an MRC if you could find a really good deal on one used. or barr (now austin oceans) if you can float the extra money. i just saw theirs comes with a flow meter which is nice and helps justify their price (or you could add one to any unit for ~$90 like i did to mine). you don't really need the flow meter, but it is a whole lot easier than counting drops. i used to think ph controllers were unnecessary (a good regulator should hold a steady bubble count) but after mushing media a few times from the effluent rate slowing down for whatever reason, i now would not consider running one without a ph controller. the milwaukee works well enough for cheap.

i really like the idea of the deltec being fluidized, but the grit it forms is too much wear and tear on the pump and their media is *way* too expensive. i think the schuran is junk, all of it's fancy features they brag about are there to correct a base design flaw- excess co2 bubbles in the body that don't want to dissolve from not running the body under pressure. a proper system doesn't have all those undissolved bubbles to begin with, so they don't need a complicated bubble collector on top to separate bubbles from liquid, just so the oversized recirc pump needed to build up enough pressure to suck those bubbles into a venturi, since they would stall the pump if they were simply sucked into the pump inlet like all other reactors do.
 
Matt, can you give me "lead" to flow meter? :)
IMHO, CO2 is cheap-- al that stuff about saving it by trapping it is nice but -- is BS...
I really like a upflow unit.. and my media is a mix of deltec and El Cheapo- Gen-X media :) it works awsome!!
 
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