Anyone else tired of spending a lot of money to renew your calcium media? Anyone else tired of a company never having the media in stock you like? Well I was and I made a choice to try something different a few years ago. Instead of spending 25 or so on 5lb bucket of calcium media which I needed to buy 3 of to fill my reactor. I decided to try using caribsea aragonite substrate. It costs 25 dollars per bag and lasts me close to a year. Yes I know it’s a fine media so what I do to combat the small grains from entering my pump is I use ARM course media on top and bottom and make a aragonite sandwich. Also before anyone asks about clogging, I have t got a clog yet but I also change out all the lines every 6 months and I rinse the old lines out with hot water then reuse them for the next change. Since the ph is a lot lower to melt the aragonite, the ARM media doesn’t melt quickly and you can reuse the 1” of arm when you do the next media fill up. The ARM will last years. I am still on my first container after 2 1/2 years. Also I use a 3 gallon bucket to first rinse out the aragonite media with rodi water and use phosguard with a pump to try and reduce the amount of po4. I do this for a week or 2 and also stir the media once a day. So if you are running a calcium reactor this is a good option to keep yearly costs down filling up your reactor
