Kalkwasser

[JDVC]

What is the proper way to use Kalkwasser?

-John

[bill-e]

With a beer chaser

[JDVC]

LOL Thanks!

What I meant is.. they talk about setting up a drip and things... do you really have to do that, or can you just mix it with your make-up water?

-John

[ReefJunkie]

Hey John, You need to drip the kalk in to your tank slowly. Kalk has a ph of about 12 so if it is added too quikly it can bring your tank up to dangerous levels. A drip rate of about 1 drip per 4 seconds works good for me.

[Jtrees]

What do you use to set up the drip and how often do you use it?

Jason

[JDVC]

I was looking at these Kent Aquadose things-- they are cheap, and thats nice... anyone use them? good or bad comments?

[FishDaddy]

John,
I use the Kent 1400 ml Aquadose on my 55. It works fine, just like a hospital IV drip. I do use Mrs. Wages Pickling Lime instead of Kalkwasser(its the same thing, just cheaper).
Dick

[tdwyatt]

If you have access to an enteral feeding bag, I would put you entire dose for 24 hours (the amount that equals you evaporation rate,) and drip it over 15 to 20 hours. The ideal thing would be to exactly equal your evaporation rate, but that is often difficult to acheive with hand controlled drip sets. If you want to get a little more sophisticated, try using a float switch to control a micro infusion pump, and have it replace your evaporation exactly. I am currently experimenting with a system that uses Bill-E's kalkreactor design with a micro float switch to infuse constantly over 24 hours. As a precaution, I have set the system to only be capable of delivering what I have approximated as the 24 hour replacement rate plus 10% to prevent disaster, but so far (1 month) it has worked flawlessly and I have not recorded any pH spikes. More later as I am more secure with this system and can devise some other failsafes...

[JJGeisler]

Hi John,
There are several ways of adding Kalkwasser to the tank but the cititical common element is the slow drip method. I started out using the IV bag method and have some detailed info on my site for the IV drip System This system works to start out but after a while can become one more chore as part of the tank maintanence. I used the IV drip method while building my Kalkwasser reactor and finaly got that system hooked up, I have some pictures of this system at Kalk drip system
The dosing system has been running for about a month now and except for a driping mixing motor, has been working great!

Tom metioned matching your evaporation rate for your Kalk addition which is deffinatly the best choice. One method for determing your evaporation rate is to place a stip of masking tape along the edge of your tank at the water line. At the same time each day for about three days draw a line on the tape at the top of the water level. Take the length x width of you tank and multiply to establish square inches. Multiply this times the distance your water drops per day (IE: 1/8" = .125, 1/4" = .25 etc) This will give you the cubic inch volume of evaporation per day. Convert cubic inches to cubic ltters of quarts and this will give you the amount of water your tank loses each day to evaporation. I can give the formula for conveting cubic inches to cubic liters/quarts in the morning, my chart is at the office.

I used this method to establish the rate for my dosing pump and has been right on the money for the past month now. Hope this helps....
JJ

[JJGeisler]

One gallon = 231 cubic inches if this helps....
JJ

[MROK12]

just a thought. an enteral feeding bag is a good idea and generally speaking it will deliver a ratio of 10 drops=1ml. You can get pretty darn low doses with them to just the same as with an i.v. bag depending on the drop factor of the tubing. Anyway as I ramble on I see this new product on page 83 of this months FAMA. It is a reef dosing pump. Looks just like an enteral feeding pump. These pumps can deliver things very accuratly even when the power goes out. I am thinking about getting one of these to dose my wifes tank since we dont have room for a CaCO3 reactor. The web page is at www.reefdosingpumps.com. depending on your budget it might be worth it.

MROK12

[JJGeisler]

Hummm....that pump looks vagely familiar...
something like this...

I got mine on e-bay and they do have more...
JJ