Kalk to 2 part?

[AMEE]

Hey guys! I currently dose kalk with my ato water just to keep my numbers close to what the Red Sea blue bucket brings.

System
Redsea Reefer 170
4 gallon water changes weekly
Kalk in ato

I haven’t been able to keep the numbers as steady as I would like due to high evaporation in the summer.

Does everybody eventually upgrade to dosing alk,ca and mg? If so which options do you guys recommend? ( doser and additives) I also have an apex

I have a new Hanna checker coming in for alk so I can get accurate numbers soon since the Red Sea Is so hard to read.

 

[AMEE]

(Edit error)

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Does everybody eventually upgrade to dosing alk,ca and mg? .

No, I dosed just limewater for 20 years.

But if it cannot keep up for you, a two part is a good plan.

 

[AMEE]

No, I dosed just limewater for 20 years.

But if it cannot keep up for you, a two part is a good plan.

All my corals are doing good. I have only one sps frag(birdsnest) that I got to try out. It was doing great and growing super fast, not looking so good now. Lost tissue on the tips. I want to keep a mixed reef so I guess that makes it a little harder trying to please so many different corals.

If you have 20 years in the hobby you must be doing something right! Do you mind telling me where you like your parameters?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

If you have 20 years in the hobby you must be doing something right! Do you mind telling me where you like your parameters?

Sure:
Optimal Parameters for a Coral Reef Aquarium: By Randy Holmes-Farley
https://www.reef2reef.com/forums/re...-coral-reef-aquarium-randy-holmes-farley.html

 

[AMEE]

Sure:
Optimal Parameters for a Coral Reef Aquarium: By Randy Holmes-Farley
https://www.reef2reef.com/forums/re...-coral-reef-aquarium-randy-holmes-farley.html

Great basically my numbers stay within those levels I was only worried that my alk was low at 7.6 compared to everybody else. How did you dose the lime water? I use the brs kalk and it’s been working good it’s just a pain in the butt to keep the container clean. I usually clean it every other week which involves using a razor to scrape the inside of the container. I will keep a better eye on my levels I would like to keep my system as simple as possible so less things can go wrong. I was under the assumption that kalk was a first step to dosing.

I will return to read the complete link that’s a lot of info thanks!

 

[enveetie]

how do you dose your kalk? drip? controller? ato?

what do you mean that you havent been able to keep numbers steady? is your doing method too erratic to keep stable numbers, or do you mean your numbers are always too high or low after dosing? with that 35 gallon you have, you can more than likely meet calc/alk demands for the foreseeable future using just kalk.

your issue seems to be stability, and not deficiency. in that case, i would recommend dosing kalk in a more controlled, automated manner. the simplest is probably dosing kalk via ato.

higher evap rates means you can add/dose more kalk overall. so again, youre probably not talking about deficiency but stability.

 

[SoCoFlyFisher]

Kalkwasser and weekly water changes.

Kalkwasser is added via an ATO setup. I use a Tunze ATO unit: the pump is in RO/DI water reservoir and when the level sensor is activated, the RO/DI water is fed into a Precision Marine Kalkreactor. This kalkwasser solution then feeds into the tank sump until the level sensor shuts off the pump as water level rises.

 

[Sabellafella]

Hey guys! I currently dose kalk with my ato water just to keep my numbers close to what the Red Sea blue bucket brings.

System
Redsea Reefer 170
4 gallon water changes weekly
Kalk in ato

I haven’t been able to keep the numbers as steady as I would like due to high evaporation in the summer.

Does everybody eventually upgrade to dosing alk,ca and mg? If so which options do you guys recommend? ( doser and additives) I also have an apex

I have a new Hanna checker coming in for alk so I can get accurate numbers soon since the Red Sea Is so hard to read.

I use both fully saturated kalk almost full evap ontop of dosing 2 part. At some point in time your tank will be consuming well over 1.2 dkh if you have some stoneys. Fully saturated topped of kalk most likely will not meet that requirement alone.

Just a little bit of math and a good way/routine to dose two part should do the trick

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Great basically my numbers stay within those levels I was only worried that my alk was low at 7.6 compared to everybody else. How did you dose the lime water? I use the brs kalk and it’s been working good it’s just a pain in the butt to keep the container clean. I usually clean it every other week which involves using a razor to scrape the inside of the container. I will keep a better eye on my levels I would like to keep my system as simple as possible so less things can go wrong. I was under the assumption that kalk was a first step to dosing.

I will return to read the complete link that’s a lot of info thanks!

I used an automatic top off system consisting of a float switch (Omega Engineering LV-1201), a slow pump (Reef Filler), and a large settled reservoir of limewater (3 44 gallon Brute cans plumbed together).

 

[AMEE]

Ok so my numbers are
7.5 alk 410 ca 1220 mg

I dose kalk with my ato using a tunze osmolator nano and my apex making sure things don’t go wrong. For the summer I lowered my kalk dose since so much more water was being used (using a fan to cool the tank)

Now my parameters are what my salt advertises. Should I just keep up what I’m doing or should I bump numbers up and let me kalk keep the numbers stable. If I raise the numbers they will probably go down with water changes also and and the tank consumes. That’s why I was thinking starting to dose. It would keep my evaporation separate from what my tank is consuming meaning more stable. I’m basically trying to see if there’s a better way or keep doing what I’m doing and if my current parameters are good.

 

[AMEE]

Seems like I messed up the last mag test. Did testing today (a day after a water change)

Ca 410
Alk 7.6
Mg 1320

If I can keep these numbers steady will I be ok? I can achieve these numbers just by water changes and 1tb of kalk per gallon of rodi.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Seems like I messed up the last mag test. Did testing today (a day after a water change)

Ca 410
Alk 7.6
Mg 1320

If I can keep these numbers steady will I be ok? I can achieve these numbers just by water changes and 1tb of kalk per gallon of rodi.

Those values are all fine, yes.

 

[AMEE]

Those values are all fine, yes.

Great thanks. I don’t want to get carried away chasing numbers and making things more complicated than they should be.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

You're welcome.

Happy Reefing.