what do you run?

[ballistic.reefer]

so ill be honest. lately ive been getting tired of dosing my tank daily and having to worry about stuff and ultimately want to end up running some reactors. i was thinking a calcium reactor, carbon, and gfo reactor. but was curious to see what everyone else out there was running, before i go running off and purchasing random crap. my tank is a 57g illuminata with a 20g sump. give me a heads up and what you recommend. i was looking at the brs dual reactor and then possibly a calcium once i find one. also does anyone do any kind of carbon dosing. (i.e vodka or sugar) or are yall running something else?

[BBMarlin]

I run carbon and gfo in (2) two little fishies reactors and I dose calcium and alk via a dosing pump hourly. I don't have any experience with a calcium reactor but more times than not when I read about people using them online they have a hard time getting them dialed in correctly and end up dosing two part as it's easier to control.

If I were to dose organic carbon I would probably try biopellets first and BRS has just come out with their own biopellet reactor which is inexpensive and looks pretty cool. Keep in mind that if you are going to do organic carbon dosing you will not need to run gfo in the long run thus a single reactor for carbon.

[ramsey]

I run a Nextreef reactor for GAC and a Nextreef reactor for biopellets. I have my ATO unit hooked up to a Geo kalk reactor. I was dosing two-part via a dosing pump but switched to kalk. Once or twice a week I dose Aquavitro fuel and once a week I dose Tech-M magnesium. I need a more accurate test kit to know for sure but I may have a small amount of phosphates and if that's the case, I'll probably get another reactor for GFO. I know that other people running biopellets have had problem with getting rid of all traces of phosphates. I should note that my nitrates are 0 and have been since I've started using biopellets. I can't recommend them enough.

[teg]

I run GFO rx, calcium rx and carbon bag. I tried carbon dosing for about 3 months; if you have a filter sock and do carbon dosing, you'll have to clean it every 2-3 days. I got tired of having to clean the filter sock every few days, so I switched back to GFO rx (less daily chores). Carbon dosing does work, just as well as GFO rx IMO; I guess if you don't use filter sock and have an over sized skimmer, carbon dosing is ok. Right now, my filter sock is acting as "pods factory", all the detritus that get traps in the filter sock are eaten by the pods; thus I no longer need to clean the filter socks (i use nylon mesh filter sock). To me Calcium rx isn't too hard to dial in, but it's important to have pH monitor for monitoring the effluent pH and also the tank's pH. Good test kits are a must when you running calcium rx, you'll want to keep track of the Alk and Calcium, so it doesn't get out of range.

[Timfish]

I'm using calcium reactors on a couple of tanks. The regulators can be twicthy when I first hook up a full CO2 bottle but usually work fine with just weekly checks. Most of my tanks just get Araga-Might added to the R.O. water for water changes.