Recommendations for Kalkwasser Dosing

[Sisterlimonpot]

Yeah oddly enough it has never affected my alk and i dont get why! My alk has been stable at 8-8.5

Silly question, are you mixing kalk with saltwater or rodi water?

 

[jayteerq]

How sure are you on your alk being only 8.3?

I have 20+ sps frags and everything is fully covered in coraline in my 180g and am dosing 40ml (0.3-0.4dkh) of brs soda ash a day to keep it stable.

Id be worried your going waaaaay higher.

Your adding 3dkh a day and then dosing on top of that?!

Yikes! You're worrying me! Lol. My alk readings are coming from my new Trident. Calibrated 2 weeks ago. I have a ALK Hanna Checker. Ill confirm my readings when i get home later. But yeah I havent noticed alk going anywhere past 8.5 which i thought was strange.

 

[jayteerq]

Silly question, are you mixing kalk with saltwater or rodi water?

RODI

 

[slythy]

Yikes! You're worrying me! Lol. My alk readings are coming from my new Trident. Calibrated 2 weeks ago. I have a ALK Hanna Checker. Ill confirm my readings when i get home later. But yeah I havent noticed alk going anywhere past 8.5 which i thought was strange.

Did you use the trident calibration fluid? I never had luck with that.

What i do is measure my tank water using my test kit (salifert) and then do a calibration and enter the values i measured of my tank water. Its been much more stable for me that way. You can base it on your hanna kit as well.

But either its all in the sand or your alks crazy high.

I was looking into a kalk stirrer and 1 gallon a day does .5 alk for me lol.

 

[Sisterlimonpot]

RODI

I'd guess that you're precipitating.

If no clumpy sand, is the water continuously cloudy?

 

[jayteerq]

Did you use the trident calibration fluid? I never had luck with that.

What i do is measure my tank water using my test kit (salifert) and then do a calibration and enter the values i measured of my tank water. Its been much more stable for me that way. You can base it on your hanna kit as well.

But either its all in the sand or your alks crazy high.

I was looking into a kalk stirrer and 1 gallon a day does .5 alk for me lol.

Dang yeah I used the calibration fluid. I guess I’ll go home and verify my alk, cal and mag with my Hanna’s and see where I’m at. Any particular reason why it would all go to the sand (if that was the case)?

 

[Dragen Fiend]

So your dosing kalk and AFR?
Why not break your dosing up throughout the night with kalk and just ditch AFR. I use both products but in different tanks.

Instead of trying to throw things into the tank to chase PH.

Have you looked at more surface agitation?
Better air circulation in the tanks location?
Refugium?

 

[jayteerq]

I'd guess that you're precipitating.

If no clumpy sand, is the water continuously cloudy?

A little bit of clumping here and there, but I wouldn’t say it’s anything drastic but the water is clear

 

[jayteerq]

So your dosing kalk and AFR?
Why not break your dosing up throughout the night with kalk and just ditch AFR. I use both products but in different tanks.

Instead of trying to throw things into the tank to chase PH.

Have you looked at more surface agitation?
Better air circulation in the tanks location?
Refugium?

I dose kalk 24/7 because my PH also drops during the day.. not sure why.

I have plenty of surface agitation with mp40 and orbit 4 gyre.

I do run a refugium at night.

 

[bobnicaragua]

Judging from your corals, you don’t need all for reef at all and you need way less kalk. You’re not running a mature SPS tank.

Just dose enough kalk to maintain your alkalinity. As demand goes up over time, you can dose more.

An outside airline to the skimmer would give you a PH boost, so will cracking windows when weather permits.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Hi guys! I've reached a little bit of an obstacle in my journey to achieving high PH. My natural PH levels hover around 7.5-7.6.
I added a CO2 Scrubber which got me up to 7.8.
I started dosing Kalkwasser and that got me to a stable 8.4 which im very happy about. Currently dosing about 5500mL a day in a 65g AIO.
My problem now is that I am dosing more than I am evaporating which means my water level keeps rising and in return im sure diluting my salinity gradually.
I'm wondering if anyone here has ran into the same issue while trying to achieve a high stable PH. Any tips or advice on what I can do to maintain a consistent water level with high PH?

I'm currently dosing 2 tsp of Kalk per gal through my Dos QuietDrive. It has a command to turn off at 8.4PH so it turns on and off throughout the day keeping PH in the range of 8.38-8.40.

Im also dosing about 20mL of AFR in the morning.

Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Does that mean the kalkwasser is made batchwise in a reservoir?

 

[jayteerq]

Does that mean the kalkwasser is made batchwise in a reservoir?

Correct

 

[jayteerq]

Did you use the trident calibration fluid? I never had luck with that.

What i do is measure my tank water using my test kit (salifert) and then do a calibration and enter the values i measured of my tank water. Its been much more stable for me that way. You can base it on your hanna kit as well.

But either its all in the sand or your alks crazy high.

I was looking into a kalk stirrer and 1 gallon a day does .5 alk for me lol.

My trident was off!!! I’m recalibrating it now with Hanna checker results. My alk was 9.24 though so not terrible.

 

[slythy]

My trident was off!!! I’m recalibrating it now with Hanna checker results. My alk was 9.24 though so not terrible.

Im shocked its only 9.2. It being less than a point off isnt too bad

 

[apb03]

It would be best to try lowering your alk to roughly what your evaporation rate is and swapping out the AFR with a 2-part pH benefit like ESV. ESV will bump your pH a lot.

 

[areefer01]

I'd guess that you're precipitating.

If no clumpy sand, is the water continuously cloudy?

Precipitation for sure assuming test results are correct. There will be residule somewhere and I'd check the dosing area, pump parts, then sand, etc.

Could also stop dosing and see if it drops and then at what rate. Based on the tank photo, and I do not mean this disrespectful, but there isn't anything in there that would consume what is being put in.

 

[areefer01]

Did you use the trident calibration fluid? I never had luck with that.

It is one of those things that two hobbyist use the same product with different results. In my experience over that past few years is that the calibration is spot on. I understand fellow hobbyist calibrating to other kits numbers but the problem, in my opinion, is what makes one sure that is accurate? Did we get all of the reagent in? Did we shake for 2 minutes? Did we catch the color change at the right drop count? Did we fill it up to the line, under the line, or 10 ml correctly? Reagents expired? Battery? And so forth.

When I get a couple back to back test results, or they are questionable, I will take out a reference solution and run a test be it single or combined. This of course assumes the reference solution numbers are correct but at some point I have to trust something...

 

[slythy]

It is one of those things that two hobbyist use the same product with different results. In my experience over that past few years is that the calibration is spot on. I understand fellow hobbyist calibrating to other kits numbers but the problem, in my opinion, is what makes one sure that is accurate? Did we get all of the reagent in? Did we shake for 2 minutes? Did we catch the color change at the right drop count? Did we fill it up to the line, under the line, or 10 ml correctly? Reagents expired? Battery? And so forth.

When I get a couple back to back test results, or they are questionable, I will take out a reference solution and run a test be it single or combined. This of course assumes the reference solution numbers are correct but at some point I have to trust something...

I get what you are saying for sure. My original method was to do 3 tests of each alk/cal/mag and the. Average or throw out an outlier. But i have done so many tests with salifert i have grown pretty confident in my ability to measure it consistently which is all I'm actually after. Most the time when i change ABC reagents my tests i get back are very close to what my trident was measuring before I swapped. If its off by a decent amount I do my couple tests to average.

My whole thing is I know what my tank runs at when I test with salifert. I should offset my trident to match those results because thats why I have a hand kit as well. Using 2 different “zeroing” points doesnt make sense to me. If I test with my trident I want it to back up what i would do with salifert incase my trident goes down.