Kalkwasser in a Pico - Am I asking for trouble?

[capt_alaver]

I've got a 2.6g Pico with a few LPS and one SPS.

Currently I'm dosing 4.0 ml of ESV Alkalinity per day with a dosing pump and 5-10 ml of ESV Calcium by hand every other day. Parameters are good, if a bit jumpy here and there but everything in the tank looks really happy.

I don't technically have an ATO, but I do have a separate dosing pump which is putting 9.2ml of RO/DI water in the tank every hour (220 ml per day) to match with evaporation. I was thinking of replacing the RO/DI water with saturated limewater instead, just to gain a little more stability all around.

Mind you, I'm not monitoring pH on this thing. I know Kalk tends to increase pH, but at the levels I'd be dosing in this tank, how likely am I to have problems with that?

 

[MoshJosh]

I used kalk in my 5 gallon evo without issue. . .

 

[capt_alaver]

I used kalk in my 5 gallon evo without issue. . .

That makes me feel better. Did you use it as an ATO?

 

[MoshJosh]

Yeah, one of those little upside down water bottle ones. Though carful if you go that route, the water bottles I was using occasionally sprung an air leak letting the kalk water dump into the tank (think the kalk weakened the plastic maybe). . . tank was fine. If you are interested in that type, might be workth looking into the icecap version, might be a bit better plastic.

 

[capt_alaver]

On the 3rd day now of topping off daily with fully saturated Kalk instead of RO/DI water. No ill effects noted in the corals - they're as big and happy as ever.

I did turn off the ESV doser just to see where it stands nutrient wise with just Kalk. As expected, Ca/Alk were way down on day two.

I turned ESV back on at 2ml/day (buffered by 30 mins so Kalk and ESV dont get dosed at once). It still went down! Gotta say it's amazing how quickly the nutrients get stripped in such a small volume of water by just four corals...

I brought them up manually to optimal levels and increased the ESV dosage up to 3ml/day.