How do you raise Calcium levels with the calcium reactor?

[plancton]

Here's the deal: I´m having slow growth, in the last two months, I let calcium levels fall from 435mg/l to 410 a month ago. Then I started increasing water changes and for the last month its been on 400mg/l.
NO3 = 0
phos = 0
alk= 8.5 -9 dkh
etc.

I have the calcium reactor calibrated at:
Ph monitor of reactor : 6.66 ph
Effluent: 3 drops per second
Bubble counter: 30bubbles per minute everytime the valve opens.
In 3 months only about 15% of the media has been consumed.
tank ph: 8.1-8.3

This setting makes me lose about 5-10 mg/l of calcium weekly.
Water changes seem to take away another 20 mg/l of calcium

Question 1: Would you:

a) lower the ph in the reactor in order to have more dissolution, thus more concentration.

b) Increase the drip rate of the effluent.

c) both

Queston 2: what would be better for corals:

a) calibrate the reactor to slowly increase calcium levels to a daily 2-3 mg/l increase, so that on each water change they will be pushed back and then start raising again. Would this slowly decrease ph to dangerous levels, or ph would get stable?.

b) Calibrate the reactor to have neither increase nor decrease and manually add supplements to raise the calcium after each week or water change?.

[plancton]

anyone?

[KRAZ4REEFS]

Increase your effluent drip, you will also have to increase your bubble rate to match the effluent drip. My effluent drips at almost a stream and 60 or more bubbles PM

[KRAZ4REEFS]

Also, I would raise the levels with additives and keep the level up with the reactor. Once the reactor is dialed in, your levels should remain even all the time. When I had my reactor set up on my old 90 gallon, it got to the point that I didn't even need to test, all params stayed even all the time.

[lordofthereef]

How big of a reactor do you have? It is possible that it is just undersized?

[sminker]

have you checked your magnesium? if your magnesium is low then your calcium level cannot increase. if you want your calcium at 435 then make sure your magnesium is atleast 1305. the rule is magnesium should be 3x your calcium number.

[Eel-byte]

You probably need to lower your ph in the reactor. But that all depends on which media you're using. I guess each media will desolve at different ph levels. I bring my reactor down to 6.5, I have no clue the bubbles I do a minute, my efluent comes out just faster than a quick drip, almost a solid stream. My dkh is 8.5 and calcium of 450.

[Untamed12]

Originally Posted by plancton

Here's the deal: I´m having slow growth, in the last two months, I let calcium levels fall from 435mg/l to 410 a month ago. Then I started increasing water changes and for the last month its been on 400mg/l.
NO3 = 0
phos = 0
alk= 8.5 -9 dkh
etc.

I have the calcium reactor calibrated at:
Ph monitor of reactor : 6.66 ph
Effluent: 3 drops per second
Bubble counter: 30bubbles per minute everytime the valve opens.
In 3 months only about 15% of the media has been consumed.
tank ph: 8.1-8.3

This setting makes me lose about 5-10 mg/l of calcium weekly.
Water changes seem to take away another 20 mg/l of calcium

Question 1: Would you:

a) lower the ph in the reactor in order to have more dissolution, thus more concentration.

b) Increase the drip rate of the effluent.

c) both

Queston 2: what would be better for corals:

a) calibrate the reactor to slowly increase calcium levels to a daily 2-3 mg/l increase, so that on each water change they will be pushed back and then start raising again. Would this slowly decrease ph to dangerous levels, or ph would get stable?.

b) Calibrate the reactor to have neither increase nor decrease and manually add supplements to raise the calcium after each week or water change?.

The first thing that comes to my mind is that your Alk will tell you a lot more about how the reactor is performing than your Ca will. Alk will move upward/downward much more quickly than Ca due to the relative abundance of Ca over Alk.

If measuring your Alk is suggesting that you need to get more out of your reactor (the levels you quoted seem just fine to me as long as they are stable), then you can make the changes you've already considered and I'll give you my experience there.

1) Lowering the pH will most likely increase the output of the reactor. It will also have a lowering effect on your tank pH, which you don't want. Generally, run the reactor at the highest pH possible to get what you need. It sounds like you are melting media at a normal rate.

2) Increasing the flow rate might increase the reactor output, but it may also decrease it. It depends on the size of your reactor. At some point, the water goes through the reactor so fast that it doesn't have enough time to react with the media and the reactor loses effectiveness.

Finally, you can measure the output of your reactor with an Alk measurement. Use 1/2 the sample size, and double your result or you will use up all your test reagent! You should be able to measure an Alk output of nearly 30 dkh if your reactor is optimized. Use the following formula to measure the output of the reactor.

(Reactor Alk - Tank Alk) * flow rate)

This formula is like saying... "how much MORE Alk is my reactor adding to the water and at what rate is it doing so?"

Using the above, you might find that reactor output of 20dkh at 100ml/min is actually worse than 15dkh at 200ml/min if your tank Alk is 9. (1100 vs. 1200). However, if your tank is 10dkh, these two settings are the same and the better one would be the one that is running at lower pH.

[CleveYank]

If your reactor is the correct size for your system it is supposed to be used to "maintain" your desired Alk/Ca balance.
So, you decide on your target.
You adjust with 2 part dosing until you get your desired Alk and Ca levels.

Then you set the Ca reactor up and bring it online slowly with bubble and drip rates intended to maintain those levels. Although some do it, you are not supposed to be changing the levels of your system via the reactors output. It's also the quickest way to get it dialed in with the maintain levels mindset. Pushing and pulling levels up and down with the reactor can get things swinging too much too quick if you get too heavy handed in the adjustments.

[plancton]

So from what you´re telling, if you increase alk with the reactor, calcium will increase as well, and there´s no way to just increase alk with the reactor without increasing calcium.

So if I have 9dkh and 440 calcium and increase the drip rate, I could get for example 9.5dkh and 450 calcium?

[Alex T.]

Plankton, do these things slowly. A reactor works on a 1 -1 ratio. Raising calcium will raise alkalinity on a proportional scale. I disagree with some others. I have a dual chamber MRC reactor and the directions clearly state that the last resort is to play with the bubble count. Increasing the drip lowers calcium and alkalinity. It doesn't raise it. This is because more CO2 will be leaving the chamber, hence a less concentrated solution in a more frequent drip. Makes sense doesn't it? This is how people get into trouble with ph plummeting in the display. My advice is don't do it.

Decreasing the drip rate with the same bubble count will increase the overall calcium and alkalinity solution in the drip because a higher concentration of CO2 is in the reactor. If you had low calcium and alkalinity, I'd say just decrease your drip rate a little. For raising just one of the values (in this case calcium) you can use any calcium chloride product on the market to give it that initial boost. I use Seachem's Reef Advantage Calcium because it also adds magnesium. My parameters stay stable for months at Calcium being 450 and dKH hovering between 9 and 10.

Hope this helps.

[plancton]

Thanks, they also told me that slightly increasing the bubble count will raise calcium, in my experience increasing the drip rate does increase alkalinity, so perhaps I can play with both the drip rate and the bubble count.

[Alex T.]

If you find that your current drip rate is no longer able to keep the parameters you set, then congratulations are in order. Things are growing and need more!! Adding more CO2 will always raise your calcium and alkalinity, but maybe at the expense of a downward ph spiral in the display. I spoke with a rep/engineer at MACNA this year and he was very firm in saying that we shouldn't really use our reactors to raise our values. Instead, we should get the values where we want them and adjust the reactor accordingly to keep them there. This is because raising one value will proportionately raise another.

It's not like doing a 2 part system where raising calcium drops alkalinity. In the case of using a reactor, they both climb, sometimes to the detriment of a high alkalinity reading. Try and do these changes slowly. It takes days to know if what you've corrected is working. Once it's dialed in, you shouldn't have to really worry about it for a while again. Sometimes using a disproportionate salt mix can make this swing go haywire when you do a water change. I was using Oceanic a while back. I struggled to keep alkalinity at 8. Then I tested a batch of salt and magnesium was almost 1800 and Calcium was at 580! I stopped using it and went to a really cheap, much maligned salt mix on these forums (no need to mention) that has a calcium of 380 and alkalinity of 9. With no adjustment, and a tank full of sps and clams I can easily keep my parameters at 450 and 10 respectively. An unbalanced salt can really throw parameters off for a while. I'd test new salt water to see if you're adding too much of one and not the other, thereby causing the shift you're seeing.

[lanshark]

Sorry meant to post this reply to CLEVEYANK ..
How do I get to a reef central thread by # ? Is this thread of how you tested still available ?