How much will a reactor help my 180 gallon freshwater tank

[PYRU]

I have never used nitrate reactors, I find water changes to be easier, and most effective, and beside that, nitrate isn't the only thing I do water changes for, they help buffer acids (add alkalinity), and other minerals, and remove hormones etc.
Beside the water changes, I find emergent plant refugiums, Pothos, or algae scrubbers simply more interesting tools.


With my latest tank, I have put the sumps in half day direct sunlight, so they easily grow lots of algae.
So far using this method, aquatic submerged and floating plants, nitrate has been almost undetectable, the tanks small side panels get enough of that sun, so they are covered in algae.
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Haven't you ran skimmers in the past? Do you have any pics or the dot?

 

[duanes]

I have run protein skimmers, to remove nitrate precursors, with lava rock as bio filtration, and to fracture the air water interface, but the flow rate in any of those I made, was much to strong for reaction using up nitrate. If I understand the process used to denitrate, the reactors need to use a very slow, trickle type flow, in a nearly anoxic environment to work.
In salt water aquariums plenums became popular for a while under deep sand beds, and the theory used a redux process in the anoxic no flow area under that substrate. I tried it for while, but my cichlids usually dug down to the fabric on the plenum, creating a nearly aerobic area, that then, halted the denitrate process.
Where sea water needs to be made up, and is costly, this makes sense, but with the ease of fresh water water changes, was hardly worth the trouble for me.