Auto top off and kalk question..

[Paradox]

This reef obsession never seems to stop. I just finished upgrading all my lights (which cost me a few limbs) and now Im thinking about making an auto-top off kalk system. I told myself that the lights will be my last reef related project and Ill calm down on the upgrades and costs.

Well to hell with that...Im thinking about my next project now and I have a few questions.

Now that my lights have been upgraded, Im getting a large amount of evaporation and my corralline isnt going as strong as it used to. Im currently dosing B-Ionic's dual calc and alk. Ive been thinking about adding Kalk instead.

My question is...

-If I make an auto top off with a pwrhead in a 5 gallon bucket controled by a float switch in the main tank, will this be able to be used to add kalk with? Or will it place it i the tank too fast?

My tank is a 50 and I guess Im evaporating about 1/4 to 1/3 rd of a gallon a day.


Or should I just do the drip method?

Thanks again for your great information. Even though this site is probably to blame for my unending obsession.

[yardboy]

I found that dripping kalk is the biggest pain in the a** and is probably what gives kalk its bad rap. I've been dosing kalk with my topoff water for quite a while now but you have to remember that if you have a saturated solution of kalk water in the top-off (which I doubt I do) then it would be quite a coincidence if the calcium demands were equal to the evaporation rate of the tank. Thus you'll eventually have a calcium shortfall (typical situation IME) or you'll overdose calcium and either see a pH rise and/or precipitation. I eventually ended up with a calcium reactor. I wish I'd gone to a kalkwasser reactor first (I guess you've seen those? DIY is the way to go) and then to a calcium reactor. Many people (my very informal poll) seem to end up having to do both, kalk and calcium, for a high calcium demand tank.
I'd have to say it's an interesting evolution in reefkeeping. When I first started, I used B-Ionic and had no problem maintaining levels. Then kalkwasser when I started having dropping numbers. Now a calcium reactor with dosing of kalk in my top-off water! Where does it end? Saturated solution in the tank? Well, actually, yes!

[Paradox]

Can I control the amount of Calcium input to match the demand of my system by just controlling the amount that I mix in the top off water?

My current concern is that since a pwr head is used to pump the water from the top of resevoir to the main tank, that it may shoot too much in at once and cause a PH spike from the kalk. However, Ive never seen a float valve controlled pwr head in action before. For a system like mine. 50 gallon tank with about a quarter gallon evap a day, how often will the pwr head turn on/off and how long does it stay on? I was thinking about the cheap 5 dollar float switches I found on ebay.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...category=46310 for example.

Im obsessed, but my remaining sense of control is still preventing me from taking the kalk reactor route.

Thanks for the input!!

[yardboy]

I never saw that ebay ad when I set mine up, I mighta been tempted. I got mine from Marine Depot and it cost $50! Has a receptacle you plug the powerhead into. Might be heavier duty. For sure it was rated for 200 Watts, which ismore than the ebay one. don't think the little powerhead I use for topoff is much more than 5 watts. Some folks swear by dosing pumps, which deliver a much smaller volume, handy if the float switch sticks and you pump all the reservoir out. But then, dripping slowly goes through a couple of gallons pretty quick, so I'm not sure that would help. Certainly a small powerhead is much cheaper than a dosing pump. In a year, the only time my switch failed was when a rogue cowry I'd put in the sump climbed up on it. Good reason to keep a reservoir that is not so large that it'll fill up the sump!
Good luck. A topoff system is quite liberating, even when you have to fill the reservoir every week. Beats every day.

[wanareef]

Our tank evaporates 1.5 to 2 gals a day. PITA to keep up. So I have put in a semi auto top-off. I have a heavy duty rubbermaid can, that I fill up with ro/di (the semi part of it). There is a PH in the bottom of the can, and that is connected to my DIY kalk ractor. It's a recirculating one that use's a PH, takes from the main colum and send it down to the bottom which stirs up the kalkwasser that settles to the bottom. This PH is on a timer, 5 mins every 6 hrs that it is on.
The pH in the can is activated by a float switch in the fuge, so when the water goes down, it turns on, the ro/di is pumped through the kalk reactor and into the sump. Have had no problems with the PH on the kalk reactor, until yesterday - been running at least 9 months. I use ESV kalkwasser, nice fine powder not residue like Mrs. Ball's picklin lime.

[Paradox]

Wanareef...Sounds like a nice setup. Did you design the kalk reactor yourself? Is there a link to an easy to make system like yours?

Thanks!!

[Geoff]

link to my kalk reactor setup info.

now i tend to make things a little more complicated than they need to be. you can easily use the same setup, but have it fed by a large bucket filled with RO/DI water sitting above the level of the float valve. for some setups this is possible for others, like mine, it is not.

G~

[Rick O]

I have recently started dripping kalk in addition to using a ca reactor. I still can't keep the ca up so I'm dripping in turbo calcium also.

I set up the kalk drip to about what I estimated the evaporation to be but also left my UltraLife topoff system running.