Calcium reactor media

[andys0601]

I recently bought a used calcium reactor. It has some media in it but how can you tell if it is used up? Does it melt completely away or what? What kind of media can someone recommend? I also heard about mag. rocks, do they work good and what type would someone recommend. I have a 125gal. and recently bought a 140gal. I would like to run them together with a 30gal. frag tank. any advise is greatly appreciated. I'm not sure what size tank the reactor is rated for but it is pretty big. (one chamber 20" high and 8" in diameter, runs on a mag 5)

[matt]

You could try washing the media in R.O. water, then rinsing in new salt water, but personally I'd toss it and just start fresh. You could consider the schuran media; it's expensive but supposedly pretty clean.

One thing about running a calcium reactor is that the low ph tends to allow for the dissolution of toxic substances that might be in some media that can get passed on to the tank. This is a subject that has come up in discussion on reefcentral. While it is a fact that metal contaminates are more soluble at low ph, what's controversial is if those toxins exist in commercial media, to what extent, and if they are passed on to the tank by running the reactor. I don't know of anyone that has done a controlled study that demonstrates one way or the other. I do know that many tanks run successfully on calcium reactors with a variety of media, so personally I don't think there's that much risk involved.

[Fish4life]

i would be most concerned with phosphates in the reactor media. go with schuran media or koralith media. IMO the cheaper reactor medias have mucho phosphates.

cheers,

Kurt

[DrMark]

Start fresh. It has been reccommended to me, and I use a mixture of:
90% KORALith
10% ZeoMag

[andys0601]

I guess starting fresh sounds like the way to go. What size granuals are better, the smaller or larger? How do you tell when it is time to replace the media.

[rocketeer]

I met a pretty serious coral farmer in CA a couple of years ago. He was using dead coral skeleton from colonies that didn't make it.

Any opinions on this?

Jack

[Bill S]

After seeing this, I checked the PO4 of my ca reactor effluent - zero.

[BIGBIRD123]

I use crushed coral and have Zero, too.

s

[andys0601]

I put crushed coral in my reactor at first but didn't seem to get any result. my calcium was 380 using kent 2 part. I stopped using the 2 part when the reactor was set up and calcium dropped quite a bit within a few days. I read that the co2 will pull out heavy metals if your media is not good enough. Just what I have heard, I'm just learning about reactors. Any ideas?