Kalk Calc?

[RobbW]

Main questions: Do I need to use Kalkwasser, and how much do I need?

Okay, so I've been kind of dormant in the hobby for awhile. Life's been busy for several months. Plus I really burned myself out by delving too deep into the hobby and letting my OCD get the better of me. My 30G mixed reef tank has been up and running all along (about 10 months now), but I haven't paid much attention to it accept for minimal maintenance and the occasional W/C.

Recently, my OCD has come full circle, and I have resolved to pay more attention to my tank. Nothing has really grown that much in the past several months, but nothing has run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible, either. The tank's just kind of been there not doing much of anything.

My Pocillopora and Candy Cane corals are the only things that have shown any progress. The Poci has firmly attached itself to my LR and spread a bit, and my Candy has split into a couple more heads. But that's about it. My Monti Cap and Purple Digitata haven't grown any and are still very pale with little to no coloring. My mushrooms haven't grown, split, or spread at all. I still can't get coralline algae to grow in my tank (couple spots on glass, but LR is bare). And I still have a hair algae problem.

About a month ago, I made the decision to try and turn my tank around and point it in the direction of glorious reefdom. After several W/Cs, rearranging some of my corals, and plucking out HA when I can, I've come to the conclusion that I need help. After testing my water parameters a few times, I noticed Ca, Alk, and Mg seemed to be staying on the low side. After reading up on Ca supplementation on the Web, I figured I'd trying dosing Kalk. Like an idiot, I just started dripping without calculating how much and how frequently to drip. I came home the other day to 600ppm Ca! I removed the Kalk drip and let my Ca slowly drop down over the past couple days.

I have been measuring how much my Ca drops each 24 hours. Also, I am monitoring the amount of water evaporating over the same time period. When I get home from work tonight, I will take another measurement of Ca and determine precisely the amount of top-off water that has to be added.

Now, finally, I get to the gist of my post. Once I figure out how much Ca gets used and how much water evaporates in a 24-hour period, how do I determine the strength of the Kalkwasser solution I should mix up and the rate of drip that will match the rate of evaporation? Is there a Kalk calculator somewhere? Do I even need to worry about dripping Kalk?

Here are my tank readings:
Temp: 80F
SG: 1.023
pH: 8.3
Alk: ~8 dKH
Ca: 320-340ppm before my Kalk drip attempt (600ppm after)
Mg: 1120ppm
Amm: undetectable
Nitrites: undetectable
Nitrates: undetectable
PO4: undetectable (phhh, whatever! I still have HA so I know that's not right.)

After my attempt at dripping Kalk and raising Ca to 600ppm, my Ca level has been dropping 20ppm per day over a 48-hour period. I have to top-off roughly 3/4 of a gallon of water in a 24-hour period. I will measure more exactly tonight. The device I was using to drip Kalk was just an empty gallon water bottle from my grocery store with a length of standard airline tubing inserted and sealed about 1" from the bottom of the bottle and an inexpensive plastic valve on the drip end.

From all of this, would anyone be able to advise me whether or not I should supplement with Kalk? If so, how much and at what rate?

Thanks all for sitting patiently through my ramblings!

[wharyat]

http://jdieck1.home.comcast.net/~jdieck1/chemcalc.html

Here's one. Be careful raising values with calc though, it can skyrocket your pH and kill everything in the tank.

Look into a 2 part solution to raise the values where you need them, then maintain it with kalk.

[wharyat]

I just realized what you had posted. 600 is a little high to shoot for, it will work, but you'll find that it will dirty up and seize your pumps much quicker with levels that high.

[RobbW]

Trust me, I don't want it that high. I'm aiming for 420-440ppm. I'm just having difficulty calculating the strength of the mixed Kalk solution and the drip rate I should use to maintain water levels in my tank.

[RobbW]

After measuring Ca and evaporation last night, I have documented the following for my tank:

1. Ca levels - After discovering way high Ca levels Monday night, I removed the Kalc drip from my system and have left the Ca alone since then. Here are my Ca levels each night (5:30pm) since then: Monday 600ppm, Tuesday 580ppm, Wednesday 560ppm, Thursday 560ppm. It's odd that my Ca didn't decrease from Wednesday to Thursday. I wonder if I just had an error in my testing process.

2. Topping off my tank each morning with RO/DI at 7:30am, I have calculated that my tank needs almost exactly 2.5 liters added every 24 hours.

Last month when I decided to start supplementing Ca in my tank, I was using Kent Marine Liquid Calcium. Since then, I have noticed a decrease in the amount hair algae on my rocks. There is still quite a bit of HA in my tank, just not as much as there used to be. I assume this drop in HA is from supplementing Ca which precipitated out the PO4 in the tank.

After doing some more searching and researching on the 'Net about Ca supplementation, I decided to switch to dripping Kalk. I figured this would avoid the build up of unwanted ions in the tank, would help keep my Ca and water level constant. Now that I've learned my lesson about just jumping right in with dripping Kalk, I want to determine if I really need to drip Kalk. And if so, calculate the % solution of Kalkwasser I should mix up and the drip rate at which I should add it to my tank.

Now that I'm paying close attention to my tank again, I want to start adding some more corals. I think I'm leaning more to SPS corals, which will most likely need Ca supplementation depending on how many SPS I add to my tank.

[Elegance Coral]

I would start by adding some tipe of ATO. Dripping kalk is a pain. It clogs up and needs constant attention. Adding kalk through an ATO is much more user friendly.

[RobbW]

EC, I would love to set up an ATO on my system, but it would be quite a pain to do so. I do not have a sump. Also, where my tank is located, there is no other furniture or fixtures around that I could set anything on or install anything. Whatever system I use will either have to set on top of my hood or just sit on the floor, which would be unsightly either way. I have no room under my cabinet to run anything from under there. If I could figure out a way to set up and run an ATO without it being an eyesore, I would.

Let's suppose I do figure out an ATO for my tank. How do you use the kalkwasser with your ATO water? Do you just run mixed kalkwasser solution only from the ATO, or do you add only a little of the mixed kalk solution in with your ATO water?

[Staplesofficewar]

Im going to bump this cause I want to know as well

[wharyat]

You would use the kalk in your ATO. You want to limit the amount of air that comes in contact with the kalk solution though. CO2 in the air reacts with the calcium hydroxide creating calcium carbonate, this makes it pretty much unusable.

Say you have a 5G bucket as your reservior. You can cut a piece of plastic sheeting to fit the diameter and lay it on top of a couple pieces of styrofoam so it floats on the surface. As the level drops, the shield drops with it.

[RobbW]

Well, now that I'm trying to plan a sump for my tank, adding an ATO is going to be feasible for me. But my questions still remain:

1). Should your ATO water be kalkwasser solution only or pure RO/DI water with a percentage of kalkwasser solution mixed in?

2). If using an ATO to add kalk to your system, is there any potential problems with the ATO adding a large volume of kalk to your system at one time versus slowly dripping the kalk?

3). If using the ATO into a sump, which chamber of the sump do you add it to?

[fihsboy]

Your going to want to run your ato from your resevoir to the reactor to the tank. This will ensure that your calcium doesnt precipitate to Calcium carbonate before it hits your tank. (aka sand) I put a link on a really nice stirrer, they are much more beneficial then the pump models, they dont make as much mess and they will do a much better job at keeping the ph constant in the chamber to drip into your tank. If I wouldnt have bought a CA reactor, I would have gone with this. If I ever go with a larger tank (which is just a matter of time) I will probably run a kalkwasser stirrer. They are cheap cheap cheap to add calcium in the long run.

http://www.aqua-medic.com/kalkwasser_stirrers.shtml


Make sure you run a very redudant system of float switches or even an optical switch. If you dump a lot of this stuff in your tank.......its death for EVERYTHING in your tank. As long as you have failsafes.......your fine. I would run a perstaltic pump from the ato resevoir to the chamber.....this will ensure a nice slow drip and will offer a little more failsafe system.

[wharyat]

1) Your top-off would be kalk solution.

2) depends how you design your ATO system. If you use a peristaltic pump, there's very little chance. Based on your system volume, it would be pretty difficult to not have pH problems unless using a slower flow pump or a choked down powerhead (using a valve).

3) The chamber where the skimmer feeds. Kalk will react with free phosphate creating calcium phosphate, which can potentially be skimmed out.