Kalk question.
- Thread starter Leandre
- Start date
tank is a 220g, total water volume about 250g. turns out, the wife had pm/am on the thermostat switched so was super warm during the day. switched it back and is about 1g a day ato. i'll look into adding kalk from an external source and see how that turns out.
my thought process is this:
im using redsea pro, which already has a higher cal/alk content, coupled with the fact its a new tank without any lifeforms demanding cal/alk. so kalk was an ideal solution to keeping it up while raising the ph of the tank. when the needs of the tank can no longer be achieved with kalk then i'll switch over to 2-part. im more of a fish guy so was leaning more on fish then corals, but i friend recently gave some xenia cutting and im taking pictures like shes a victoria's secret model...
anyways thanks for all your help on the matter. i may continue to use kalk as a buffer and 2part to raise the cal/alk. i need to do more reading. thanks again, have a great weekend~
my thought process is this:
im using redsea pro, which already has a higher cal/alk content, coupled with the fact its a new tank without any lifeforms demanding cal/alk. so kalk was an ideal solution to keeping it up while raising the ph of the tank. when the needs of the tank can no longer be achieved with kalk then i'll switch over to 2-part. im more of a fish guy so was leaning more on fish then corals, but i friend recently gave some xenia cutting and im taking pictures like shes a victoria's secret model...
anyways thanks for all your help on the matter. i may continue to use kalk as a buffer and 2part to raise the cal/alk. i need to do more reading. thanks again, have a great weekend~
Kalk will ruin your ATO pump but for someone like me it's significantly cheaper to buy a cheapie pump replacement every few years than a Kalk stirrer (especially since my tank is a whopping 29g).
Kalk is great for maintaining stabil params, it's best hidden benefit is keeping pH stable around 8.3 which is ideal.
Start small with 1 TSP per gallon of ATO water, and test daily to see the swings, and adjust upwards from there. Maximum amount of Kalk you can use in a gallon is 2 TSP, any more than 2 TSP per gallon and it will precipitate out unless you add vinegar to help more Kalk absorb into the water -- Which is something I do not have experience with.
My tank which is again, 29g, and only filled with frags has a 3g ATO. Currently with my 25'ish frags (mostly SPS, 2 acans, 2 favia, 6 Zoa's) my tank is sustained relatively well with only 4 TSP of Kalk in 3 gallons of ATO water. To this I can and will dose about 20ml of Alk a week. Within a week of Kalk dosing most of the algae's in my tank had died out. I *believe* this is due to the more stable pH, as a pH of 8+ supposedly makes it harder for Algae to survive due to some magic I do not know the chemistry / biological aspects of.
Hope this helps!
Kalk is great for maintaining stabil params, it's best hidden benefit is keeping pH stable around 8.3 which is ideal.
Start small with 1 TSP per gallon of ATO water, and test daily to see the swings, and adjust upwards from there. Maximum amount of Kalk you can use in a gallon is 2 TSP, any more than 2 TSP per gallon and it will precipitate out unless you add vinegar to help more Kalk absorb into the water -- Which is something I do not have experience with.
My tank which is again, 29g, and only filled with frags has a 3g ATO. Currently with my 25'ish frags (mostly SPS, 2 acans, 2 favia, 6 Zoa's) my tank is sustained relatively well with only 4 TSP of Kalk in 3 gallons of ATO water. To this I can and will dose about 20ml of Alk a week. Within a week of Kalk dosing most of the algae's in my tank had died out. I *believe* this is due to the more stable pH, as a pH of 8+ supposedly makes it harder for Algae to survive due to some magic I do not know the chemistry / biological aspects of.
Hope this helps!
thanks for the write up, started using 1tsp per gallon and the PH went from 7.9 to a 8.28 over night. ive set the apex to auto turn off the ato at PH 8.3. now im really looking into doing a drip container for kalk. reason being, i want to run a line with a float valve from the RODI direct to the ato chamber. so for the next couple of weeks im gonna monitor water usage on the ato and try to get a rough idea how much kalk im using to keep ph up and use that ratio for an external kalk dripper. i know BRS do a DIY kalk dripper kit, anyone used them?
also, which dosing pumps do you guys recommend? im leaning on DOS right now only cus i have a 1-link so no extra power cables needed.
also, which dosing pumps do you guys recommend? im leaning on DOS right now only cus i have a 1-link so no extra power cables needed.
No experience with a Kalk dripper but they are pretty simple, the BRS kit is a little spendy for what it is, but it's also fairly nice looking -- BRS stuff never let me down, and a component this simple is pretty fool proof. I'd say go for it!
Reefers are either cheap asses or great at wasting money. So you're going to get a lot of people recommending the DOS and the BRS 1.1, lol. A simple BRS 1.1 will do fine for basic application, for lack of a better term it's a "dumb doser". The DOS is more reactive to the system, and is a much smarter overall doser than anything else out there. It just -might- be more reliable too, as it's more reactive to your overall system.
Watch BRS videos on the DOS, it's pretty cool.
Reefers are either cheap asses or great at wasting money. So you're going to get a lot of people recommending the DOS and the BRS 1.1, lol. A simple BRS 1.1 will do fine for basic application, for lack of a better term it's a "dumb doser". The DOS is more reactive to the system, and is a much smarter overall doser than anything else out there. It just -might- be more reliable too, as it's more reactive to your overall system.
Watch BRS videos on the DOS, it's pretty cool.
