ALK Alternative

Reef Pets · Dec 1, 2008

I have to raise the ALK in my system about every other day.... Right now I use Coral Builder made by Kent. But, for 500 gallons of water I use a TON of the stuff which gets expensive, about 30.00 per week to keep the levels where they need to be. My question is, does anyone use an alternative supplimet to raise the ALK? For example, many people use pickling lime to raise the calcium level instead of Kalkwasser.

I do not want to add a reactor, I like dosing.

alvieman · Dec 1, 2008

Washing Soda (baked baking soda) mix 2 cups of this with 1g of water, definitely more potent and cheaper. Take the 2 cups, put on a cookie sheet, bake at 300 degree's for about 1-1.5 hours. Let it cool, then mix it with one gallon of RO water. Instant Alk dosing. You can use pelladow for your calcium dosing too, just add 1g of water to 2cups of pelladow. Great 2 part system.

Reef Pets · Dec 1, 2008

That sounds pretty easy to do. That seems like a lot of baking soda for one gallon of water. I top off about 10 gallons per day. That would be 20 cups of baking soda per day?

coralfarm123 · Dec 1, 2008

You use the baking soda/water solution to dose the tank seperate from top off unless you water it down a bunch. Here is a link to Randy's 2 part recipe that is commonly used as a cheap alternative for Calcium, Alkalinity, and Magnesium supplementation.

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-02/rhf/index.php

Use this reef calculator below and you can figure out how much to use and then just keep an eye on Alk and Calcium and dose from your solutions accordingly.

http://home.comcast.net/~jdieck1/chemcalc.html

You will save a ton of money with this recipe. Also you can get all the harder to find stuff you need at Buckeye Field Supply in Ohio www.buckeyefieldsupply.com. I buy my calcium chloride and magnesium chloride from them and buy Baking Soda in 12lb bags at Sam's Club for next to nothing and you can get Magnesium Sulfate(Epsom Salt) in bulk cheap too.