Cali Kid Corals

Kalkwasser & ph anecdote

Good discussion. FWIW, I personally am adding it to my ATO water and expect to continue to do. It's incredibly easy, and has multiple positive impacts. Particularly because:

I wonder if some sub saturated level of kalk in ATO could help some with alk and PH but not have much impact based on daily variation.
that's what I did and was planning to do. Using kalk as the only source of Alk&Ca sourced from ATO, and even doing it in August with a tank being cooled by a fan, seems like a disaster waiting to happen. Putting a bit of Kalk in the ATO to add a more constant trickle of Alk+Ca and give a pH boost seems like a nice win for very little effort.
 
I also don’t recommend kalk in ato, anything I’m adding to my tank I want to be able to control it, evap can’t be controlled so your kalk adding is only added upon evap. If anyone on here wants to discuss kalk please come into the shop, I have a lot of info on kalk dosing, it’s all I use at the shop, I don’t use 2 part or run calcium reactors, I’ve been doing kalk dosing for almost 20 years, and with my new method I adopted a couple years ago tweaking with Chris mecklys method I have found significant results, so please come in and pick my brain! I love talking kalk! My ph never falls below 8.3 I run an average of 8.4, this last week has had a little instability due to not using the air exchange unit it not because it’s so freaking cold out! Usually my average is about 8.45
I wish I could come in to your shop more often, but I'm down in SJ so it's a bit of a drive for me. A question: Are you able to maintain Ca and Alk from Kalk alone? I find that I am replacing close to 100% of my tanks evaporation with saturated Kalkwasser through a Kamoer dosing pump, and I still have to add 2-part to maintain Ca and Alk. Am I doing something wrong? I don't think I have a particularly large demand from my corals, at least not compared to your tanks!
 
If you can’t add enough kalk due to your evap rate, then kick your evap up with evaporative cooling fans. I am able to dose as much as I want and I still don’t hit evap rate because I have huge surface areas on the tank with no tops. I done kalk based on alk consumption, once you get your all steady your ph will elevate and if you can maintain an elevated ph the. Everything falls into order, my calcium stays around 430-460 through kalk, I only add magnesium and traces as well as saturated kalk. You have to make sure your kalk is max saturated, or you have to dose so much more to achieve the same results. You can do that by sticking a ph own or probe in your kalk vat. 12.45 ph is where you want to be at
 
If you can’t add enough kalk due to your evap rate, then kick your evap up with evaporative cooling fans. I am able to dose as much as I want and I still don’t hit evap rate because I have huge surface areas on the tank with no tops. I done kalk based on alk consumption, once you get your all steady your ph will elevate and if you can maintain an elevated ph the. Everything falls into order, my calcium stays around 430-460 through kalk, I only add magnesium and traces as well as saturated kalk. You have to make sure your kalk is max saturated, or you have to dose so much more to achieve the same results. You can do that by sticking a ph own or probe in your kalk vat. 12.45 ph is where you want to be at
Thanks for the tips!
 
I wish I could come in to your shop more often, but I'm down in SJ so it's a bit of a drive for me. A question: Are you able to maintain Ca and Alk from Kalk alone? I find that I am replacing close to 100% of my tanks evaporation with saturated Kalkwasser through a Kamoer dosing pump, and I still have to add 2-part to maintain Ca and Alk. Am I doing something wrong? I don't think I have a particularly large demand from my corals, at least not compared to your tanks!
How much are you adding back daily for kalk? Figured with a no lid rimless tank you'd be going through at least a liter a day. A fan in the sump might increase evap by getting out the humid air.
 
How much are you adding back daily for kalk? Figured with a no lid rimless tank you'd be going through at least a liter a day. A fan in the sump might increase evap by getting out the humid air.
I'm dosing 2.2L of saturated Kalk a day, I could go up to 2.4L maybe? My ATO still adds in a little bit of water every day. A fan seems like a good solution to increase evaporation. Would double as a chiller on the warmer days here in San Jose, score!
 
I have been dosing Kalk slurry for one year on April 18th. I'm only doing 1/4cup per gallon. The tanks get some where near 2000mL per day which is close to my evaporation. Corals are looking great. I have lost coral but it has been from aiptasia.

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@under_water_ninja Per your advice I checked the pH of my freshly mixed Kalkwasser and it came out to 12.1. I was following the 6 grams per gallon recipe, but in my case, it seems like I need more to get up to 12.45 (more like 7g per gallon). I should have been verifying saturation with a pH probe the whole time. Hoping I get more punch out of this batch, haha.
 
Sorry for late replies;

- I dose kalk through my ATO, I checked last month and I evaporate about 1.5 gallons a day. (Is this a lot?)
- I dose though a home made mixer. It's a tall tube with a maxijet plumbed such that water at the top is blasted into the bottom of the tube for 1 minute 4 times a day (12AM, 6AM, 12PM, 6PM). One minute is just enough to bring a cloud up to almost the intake of the pump (kalk grit eats impellers)
- The ATO RO water is injected at the halfway mark of the tube, the output from the mixed to the sump is at the very top. The theory is that the kalkpowder is mixed up enough by the pump to keep the solution saturated. When the ATO kicks in, it takes CLEAR solution from the top of the tube (the tube is I think about 4 feet tall).
Mine is basically build on whatever plans this was based on, if not in fact this one exactly;
However, my pump intake is attached to a PVC pipe on an elbow, so intake is from the top of the tube and output is at the bottom.
- My ATO is fed by a SpectraPure litermeter (the "Ultimate Auto Top Off", which I'm not sure if they still sell) so it is a peristaltic pump forcing low volumes of water into the stirrer to squirt out kalk into the sump, where it dumps into the section that the drains empy...so it drips into the fast moving sump "intake".

- Since I've taken a closer look at my alk readings lately, thanks to the hanna checker making it easier, I've been bringing ALK up using the alk part of the 2 part solution (Randy's formula of washing soda, but using stuff I bought from BRS, not Arm & Hammer) and NOT dosing calcium. I've been bringing alk up to around 10.0 as my CA is measured at about 600 ppm, which is too high, and yet the alk of 10.0 doesn't seem to precipitate it all out.
pH is about 8.2 ish.

And yes, most of my corals are softies. I've been bringing alk up to help the hard corals (LPS and one or two sps).


- Future plans - taking kalk off ATO, and dosing it directly...

I've read quite a few opinions that using Kalk as ATO is inconsistent, and it's true, as you rely on evaporation and also on whenever your ATO decides to kick in. So I'm now thinking that maybe I'll get another peristaltic pump to dose the kalk, and have the ATO simply top off RO water. As long as the kalk dosing is LESS than the evaporation rate, then it should not overflow and the ATO will only kick in every once in a while, and then only when needed. That would certainly provide more consistency in dosing. I could guess that at 1.5 gallons/day I'll just do some math to figure out the dosing rate and do a constant dose, rather than dosing it all over an hour or two. But I'm lazy, we'll see if this ever happens.

V
 
Also, All For Reef can definitely lower pH, since it is converted to the active components by bacterial metabolism (which lowers pH). This is one of the main reasons not to use it for a large consumption tank. I found out the hard way a couple years ago.
Interesting. I use their carbo calcium which is essentially the same except doesn’t add in the essential elements-just alk, ca, and mg.
I see no impact on PH per se. Fairly stable at 8.1-8.3 on a daily basis. Hopefully if I ever get the epoxy resin out of the system (almost there) -the CO2 scrubber will make up for the lower end of the PH
 
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