calcium reactor media

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Ace25

www.centralcoastreefclub. com
Oct 3, 2005
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Pretty much, crushed coral/giant pieces of aragonite. The CO2 dissolves the solid media into a consumable form for your corals. Sand beds in tanks do this to some degree on their own and why you notice over the course of a year your sand bed seems to be more shallow then when you first set it up. You should add a little sand back into your tank yearly to make up for this. Since the pH in your tank is high it doesn't dissolve that quickly, but when you lower the pH to 6.8 or whatever your reactor/media tells you to set it at it dissolves much quicker.

Circle of life in the oceans.. sand dissolves, corals consume it, corals die or things like Parrot fish eat them and return them back into their sand bed form and the cycle repeats. :)
 

duneenworywifit

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Jul 23, 2007
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this may sound like a stupid question but please understand that pet stores here dont sell this stuff.I have no idea what the media looks like..
 

Ace25

www.centralcoastreefclub. com
Oct 3, 2005
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The media like looks like white pebbles/small rocks. Don't worry, no stupid questions, I am sure if and when I setup my own reactor I will have questions I feel stupid asking because I know others who have them setup will think it is so easy to do since they have done it, but to a noob it is a little intimidating, even for me.

 

fsn77

AC Moderators
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Feb 22, 2006
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Ask away duneenworywifit... It all seems rather intimidating (I was a bit overwhelmed at first), but once you talk through it and get into it some, it does actually get easier to understand.
 

duneenworywifit

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Jul 23, 2007
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This is why Im a little lost.. Our sand here is mainly crushed coral.There is little rock in it as it is literally all seashells.Would this keep my calcium levels up?I will be using RO-DI water with natural sand and rock.Will this affect anything..If I do 10-15% water changes once a month I should be cool....yeah?Do I really need a ca Reactor?what would make me need one?Does that depend what you have in your tank?Sorry if this sounds confused.
 

Ace25

www.centralcoastreefclub. com
Oct 3, 2005
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You do not need a CA reactor in the beginning, if ever. It just depends on the types of corals you keep. If you are doing a full SPS coral tank then yes, a CA reactor is pretty much required to make the job the easiest for adding Alk/CA back into the tank. If your doing softies, you will never need a CA reactor, and with LPS corals (frogspawn type) you can get away with just dosing 2 part solution like B-Ionic.
 

Amphiprion

Contain the Excitement...
Feb 14, 2007
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Regular crushed coral is notoriously high in phosphate and is a bad choice, IMHO. Some people use it without issue, though. There was actually a few comparisons a while back, but I don't know if the numbers still hold true. ARM and Korallith were lower in PO4 compared to others, but were low in magnesium. The magnesium may or may not be of concern, though, depending on how it is depleted in your system.

Do you need one? No, not at all, unless you have an extremely large demand and/or a large tank. Up to a certain tank size and/or demand, it is actually cheaper to use a few other methods for most/all of your calcium demands. If you are keeping calcifying corals, the calcium in water changes won't be enough over time, but will likely be ok for soft corals. So yes, the addition of extra calcium and alkalinity(via any supplementation scheme--2 part, reactor, kalkwasser, etc.) will depend on what you have in your tank. That being said, there are people that are maintaining very large coral populations on 2 part and/or a kalkwasser alone. I've done it in the past, myself.
 
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