HALP Reactors and Skimmers

[Sniperhank]

Ok, this might be a long one and I hope that I don't end up losing my point. Calcium reactors. Aside from keeping the calcium going and being probably the most effective way of keeping calcium up doesn't it also keep pH stabilized since it has to drop/increase it to cause the reaction to get the calcium into the water?

Kalk reactors. I don't even know what these are even after reading. You throw some stuff in it and it does something...can it help with pH issues? BTW, I'm still having pH issues and need to dose with every water change.

Skimmers. Mine is skimming...a victory in my eyes. With what it is skimming, should it be watery? I picked up a couple pieces of info that if it is watery then it needs to be raised up some from the water? It is doing a good job at skimming, I'm just not sure if it should be wet or dry.

[carey]

Not sure about the calcium reactors, havent read up on those yet. lol

If you dose kalk it will help with your ph, I have low ph and while i was dosing Kalk it was very steady at 8.3. But I stopped dosing cause of some coral issues and now its back to a stable 7.9-8.0 :-(

As far as the skimmer, I have mine set so that it skims a dryer skimmate, means less dumping of the cup too as well as a "meatier" skim. Thats something you just dial in according to your preference really.

Hope that was at least a little helpful! lol

[Sniperhank]

Yeah...8.0 is me after dosing...

What do you mean meatier skim? I'd really kill for a pig roast... So, I can just adjust my air intake for this? I have a crappy Seaclone 100 here.

[carey]

Not sure how you adjust one of those, but with mine I just let the head of bubbles touch the top of the neck of the skimmer, right before it drops down to the cup. Meatier as in nastier, chunkier and just overall dreadful. Just cleaned out mine today and it was almost black and smelled like death. lol

[Sniperhank]

Smell of death I can handle...61 lbs black lab/husky that aims her rear at you while you sleep and farts or will make sure you can't get away and does it. Evil creature...

And yeah...I have no clue how to adjust it asides the air intake. The instructions were awful and it took me forever to get it to skim. I'll fiddle with it when I get home.

[Sniperhank]

So, I keep reading more and more about kalkreactors. Do they all have sensors for pH? I'm looking over specs for them and don't see it listed anywhere. Anyone know the difference between some of these or uses one themselves? I'm seeing a large difference in price. Some are like...70 bucks and then the price goes up to 200.

[melosu58]

Moved to General Hardware and equipment discussion.

[Sniperhank]

Didn't know we had a hardware section...

Well, I've been reading mroe and more about Kalk reactors, and aside from the really cheap ones the price seems to be the same or close to calcium reactors. Both will provide the same results with calcium/alk/pH...but I have no clue which I should use.

[Sniperhank]

Ok, just as an update...the pH problem is stemming from my house water as I have a spring. I am adding buffer daily. I have my powerheads pointed at the surface to reduce my CO2 incase that is an issue and I feed every other day lightly and any leftover food I pull out of the powerheads/filter and feed to my duncan. At a real loss here...considering paking soda with my water as I'm preparing for a PWC, is this safe?