Kalk and Calcium rx question

rng_pw · Feb 10, 2010

Ok I have had my calcium and kalk reactor running on my tank for a little over a month now. Im still having trouble getting things dialed in though. My calcium still fluctuates quite a bit and stays pretty low (around 350). My kalk on the other hand is up around 11. I noticed that if I adjust my out put on the calcium reactor that my kalk goes up. Any suggestions? Im running a life reef calcium reactor with TLF rebourn media and PM kalk reactor with pickeling lime. Thanks in advance. Ohh yeah I would like to stay in the area of 450 calcium and 10 alk. Thanks

Ricky,

Reefnjunkie · Feb 10, 2010

Are you running you CR off of a controller or just monitoring the effluent via test kits?
Whats the KH and PH off your effluent, how many drops/min or liters/hr?

Brad Syphus · Feb 10, 2010

You should manually bump your calcium up to where you want it (450) by doseing your tank. The reactors are to keep your tank water stabile.

rng_pw · Feb 10, 2010

Hey Brad, I run my CR off of a milwaukie controller. I'm not sure what the kh or ph off of the effluent is, ive never tested. what should it be? Right now Im at about 2 drops every 3 seconds.

Ricky,

rng_pw · Feb 10, 2010

Thats funny while I was responding to Brads (reefnjunkie) post another brad posted. Any way I guess thats not that funny but ohh well.

Ricky,

rng_pw · Feb 10, 2010

Brad Syphus said:
You should manually bump your calcium up to where you want it (450) by doseing your tank. The reactors are to keep your tank water stabile.

Thats what I have been doing. The calcium is still dropping and the alk is staying pretty high. I'm not dosing Kalk at the moment at all because someone told me that will help to bring the alk down a bit.

beaslbob · Feb 10, 2010

I am not a calcium reactor specialist but from what I hear they can be more a carbonate supplier than calcium. And alk of 11-12dkh with a calcium of 350ppm is pretty well normal.

Perhaps others can chime in.

my .02

Brad Syphus · Feb 10, 2010

Calcium reactor effluent should have the dkh at around 30dkh and a ph of 6.8-6.3
If the ph gets too low it will turn your media to mush.
With the ph effluent being that low it tends to bring your DT water ph down, This is why I run a kal reactor also to bring the ph up. Thus keeping the DT water stabile. Does that make sense? Stability is key.

rng_pw · Feb 10, 2010

Brad Syphus said:
Calcium reactor effluent should have the dkh at around 30dkh and a ph of 6.8-6.3
If the ph gets too low it will turn your media to mush.
With the ph effluent being that low it tends to bring your DT water ph down, This is why I run a kal reactor also to bring the ph up. Thus keeping the DT water stabile. Does that make sense? Stability is key.

Yes that makes sense. That is one of the reasons that I opted to run both. Im just still trying to find that sweet spot where everything is where I want it to be. Do you still have to manually dose or do your reactors handle it all for you?

Brad Syphus · Feb 10, 2010

I'm always tweeking here and there. They say automatic. Yea right. as long as you adjust them all the time. Nothing is automatic. LOL

rng_pw · Feb 10, 2010

sounds about right. Ohh well one thing that I have learned with this hobby is that you can never get too comfortable

.

Ricky,

Brad Syphus · Feb 10, 2010

Definately. Everytime I start slacking, thats when problems pop up. I had a main pump go down on me between xmas and new years. I took care of it but I lost alot of water. Once I had it back up and running I lost a huge acro colony. I couldnt figure out why untill I checked my salinity. I didn't even think about it at the time. Its the little things like that we tend to forget.

Reefnjunkie · Feb 10, 2010

Hey Ricky, sorry I posted those questions before going into the office. The other Brad has about the same answers I was going to have.
I am not sure how long you have had the CR but when I set mine up I first set the bubble counter to roughly 35 per min as a base line, slowed the effluent to one Qt per Hr.
My target was an effluent ph of 6.5 and the KH should be around 35-40.
I ran a marine pinpoint PH controller and had the high set at 6.6 and the low at 6.4, so at 6.6 it kicked n the solenoid and at 6.5 it turned it off. The 6.5 was "the center value" or the off target.
It may not be correct but perhaps your effluent's PH is to high-you want to shoot for 6.5.
At those set points it kept ( I say kept because I just bought a reef keeper elite, and now I am starting all over, with the addition of a kalk reactor running off the RKE) my KH at 10.8 and calcium at 440-rock solid for about 3 months-it truly was set it and forget, so I cant relate to the "constant tweaking" at least wit the controller I used.-which is now for sale-LOL
The only reason I switched to the RKE was I wanted to incorporate the Kalk reactor and with the new RKE so I have one controller to run everything. My ph never got above 8.13 during the day and dropped to 7.85-7.90 at night-not major but I wanted more consistency, plus I want to shoot for at least 450-500 for my Ca, and keep the KH around 11 bur the PH stay around 8.2-8.3-My goal anyhow-

Sorry for the long message-in short test that effluent PH maybe its not melting the aragonite fast enough-or while I'm on that what media are you using. Myself I use ARM by Carib Sea.

Good luck!