Adding Kalk to PH Toolset

[Treefer32]

I was thinking of adding kalk to a doser and dosing that throughout the day or night in addition to my dosing regimen of 2-part. I dose baked Baking soda, calcium chloride, and magnesium chloride / mg sulfate mix.

My alk and calcium I dose equally at around 240 ml per day in my 340 gallon system. If I stop dosing (e.g. run out of alk / cacl while out of town) my alk will drop around 1- 1.5 dkh per day. That would be the minimum I need to dose back to maintain.

I used the kalk calculator to determine, based on water volume how much kalk water it would take to maintain 1-1.5 dkh and wow, that was a lot of kalk water. Gave me warnings not to do that. Lol. I don't plan on doing a kalk stirrir I just wanted to supplement my alk dosing with higher ph. Is this impractical for larger system? Or what combination of kalkwater (on a doser) and 2-part would I dose to achieve optimal results. I've overdosed kalk using top off in a smaller system and will never do that again, a measured doser it is.

 

[blaxsun]

That's a lot of calcium - I see a calcium reactor in your future...

I think what you're after is doable, but I'll let the kalk experts weigh-in

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

You can use this calculator for calculations.

Reef Chemistry Calculator

1.5 dKH requires one to add 1.3% of the water volume (1.3 gallons per 100 gallons water volume).

FWIW, I typically dosed more than that to my system.

 

[Treefer32]

So, almost 4 gallons per day? I'd almost be better off dosing in my top off. It's a 75 gallon drum. I probably evaporate 1-3 gallons per day. I don't lack the control though. If a top off pump gets stuck on, a float switch gets stuck on. I do have it set to shut off after 90 seconds. But, seems really easy to accidently top off with too much kalk.

That's way more than I was expecting.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Kalkwasser is often dosed to near the evaporation limit. I dosed it via my ato, but a dosing pump would allow better day to day control.

 

[Treefer32]

I have 2 x 75 gallon agricultural drums. 1 for fresh water and 1 for salt water. I have them plumbed together so I can transfer freshwater to the salt water drum. Then valved off to close the fresh water drum and mix the salt into the salt water drum. At times I've removed 150 gallons out of my display. Then pumped the 75 gallons premixed salt water to the sump, let it mix there, then, pump the other 75 gallons of fresh water into the salt water mixing drum and mix another batch.

I've also lived more dangerously and mixed my salt water to a very high concentration of salinity. To a point where it would be 1.025-1.026 when mixed with 75 gallons of fresh water. Then open both valves and have them mix in the pipes to the display. Surprisingly this also has worked well.

The reason for all that, is if I dose Kalk to my fresh water reservoir, I would need to bring the drum out of the house and wash it out anytime I'm pumping water in for a water change.


I really like having 30 days of top off water sitting there. If something comes up I need to do a water change it takes me less than 10 minutes to get a 10% water change done. I'll have to figure something else out.