Still have to dose calcium with a calcium reactor?

[limitup]

I'm looking into getting a calcium reactor. One of the things the guy at my LFS said was that although they are great, you will still need to add calcium manually every now and then. I said, can't you just crank up the calcium reactor to output the amount you need, and he said no it can only do so much blah blah. So I guess I'm wondering first of all, does this make sense? And if so, what exactly are the benefits of a calcium reactor if you still need to manually add calcium every now and then?

 

[BillyZ]

I'm no that familiar with them so hopefully someone else will chime in.

The way they work is by passing water that has been subject to high levels of CO2 to drop the ph over a volume of calcium carbonate. That water draws the CA and is then returned to the tank. The rate at which this happens I assume has a maximum. If the water moves too quickly it won't have the chance to draw off the CA (I assume). So I would imagine the thing to do would be to be sure you get a reactor that is sufficiently sized for your needs. Probably go a little bigger than you think so that as your tank grows (and your corals grow) you still have some room to grow in your reactor.