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I must confess that I've been running a test of sorts...
I haven't been running my skimmer for 5 months and I've only done three 15g water changes in that period of time. My tank is a 180g display (220g system) with 18 fish, 2 anenomes, many LPS, and inverts. (4 of my fish are 5 - 6" tangs/rabbitfish)
I wanted to see just how much this reactor can take and it's proven itself to take just about whatever I can throw at it.
My nitrate test yesterday indicated 5ppm. (Salifert) This is simply amazing, as I'm sure I would be well over 100ppm if I was not running this reactor.
This coming week I will be tearing apart my refugium and setting it up as a new home for my Peacock Mantis. (somewhat temporary as I have a large tank for him that will be setup in the future) I will also be starting up my Skimmer once again.
A few things I've noticed are that it definately 'uses/lowers' alkalinity. For my system my Kalk Reactor offset's this almost perfectly, for others you may have to dose or use a different method to maintain alkalinity. (I have to add a little baking soda now and then to keep things right)
The other thing I've noticed is that my drip rate will slowly taper off about once a month. All I have to do then is crank my restrictor valve all the way open for about a day and then it comes back fine. I believe the unit very 'slowly' airlocks and then you have to relieve the built up Nitrogen. I don't actually see this Nitrogen, but I'm not sure what else would account for this strange behaviour.
In any case, this piece of equipment requires the least amount of maintenance and does the greatest amount of filtration of any mechanical method I've used or seen so far. In the next couple months I plan to clean the reactor out and switch to a bead or pearl sulphur material. This is because I want too, not really because I need to.
Hopefully somebody finds this information useful and I will be around more to answer questions. (summer was very busy for me)
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