For the past three months, I've been fighting with my calcium reactor to maintain proper calcium, alkalinity and pH. My tank is a 90 gal reef with 30 gal. `fuge and about 15 gals. worth of sump water. Reactor is an MRC CR-1 running ARM media and a small secondary chamber - not MRC. Equip. appears to be operating as it should.
I've tried settings with the reactor eff. set at 20 ml/min. pH=6.9 to 6.7. I've tried eff. settings at 50 to 60 ml/min. with eff. pH at 6.5 to 6.8. I cannot seem to get alk. to rise above 3.5 meq/L or calcium above 350. pH remains around 8.0 - 8.1. I've since started adding Kent powdered buffer every morning (at manufacturer recommended rate) and Sea Chem powdered calcium every evening at the Sea Chem rate - all the while with the reactor running for the last two weeks. I had hoped to boost levels and then see if the reactor could maintain it. No luck. Coral look great, but still no luck with the chem tests. Any idea what might be outa whack? At what setting do you run your reactors ? Thanks for any advice!
I've tried settings with the reactor eff. set at 20 ml/min. pH=6.9 to 6.7. I've tried eff. settings at 50 to 60 ml/min. with eff. pH at 6.5 to 6.8. I cannot seem to get alk. to rise above 3.5 meq/L or calcium above 350. pH remains around 8.0 - 8.1. I've since started adding Kent powdered buffer every morning (at manufacturer recommended rate) and Sea Chem powdered calcium every evening at the Sea Chem rate - all the while with the reactor running for the last two weeks. I had hoped to boost levels and then see if the reactor could maintain it. No luck. Coral look great, but still no luck with the chem tests. Any idea what might be outa whack? At what setting do you run your reactors ? Thanks for any advice!
