Bolus dosing

[KStatefan]

That would be a truly shocking mistake if it is true.

Can someone track down the exact FM directions for making the alk dosing solution from their powder?

I have complete confidence in my friends alk titration data, but he may not have mixed it to FM concentration specs.

Then we can see if there is a mistake in the alk claim.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Strange that the directions seem to say that 500 grams equals one pound. I guess rigor is not important here. Lol

 

[Lasse]

I just set a nominal value (set point) of 8.6 instead for my normal 7.6. I run my dosing pumps by my KH director´s adaption mode. I use Triton Core7 system. Alkalinity solution is 3a+b. They say that the solution is 3.5 x stronger than the normal alkalinity solution in classic Balling ( NaHCO3) - hence I suppose it is Na2CO3 mostly.

I rise alkalinity 1 dKH during 35 hours

Stop dosing 21:00 yesterday. Analyse alkalinity every hour. I will program my KH director to have a nominal value of 7 and let it run without dosing until tomorrow if not the set point is reached before that

In this way - I will be able to report my aquariums alkalinity consumption hour for hour during at least 24 hours

Sincerely Lasse

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Ok, 500 g in 5 L is the recipe.

My friend used 303,9 mg of Carbonate mix in 1 l of ultrapure water.

Thus, the recipe is 100 g/L, which is 329 times as much as my friend used.

He got an alk of 10 dKH.

That means the Balling Dosing solution is 3290 dKH, which is reasonable .

If we add 10 mL of that to 100 L (a 10,000 fold dilution) alk will rise by 0.33 dKH.

FM claims it adds 0.5 dKH.

Wow, we found the missing alk. It was never added to the product.

This is shocking, IMO.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I just set a nominal value (set point) of 8.6 instead for my normal 7.6. I run my dosing pumps by my KH director´s adaption mode. I use Triton Core7 system. Alkalinity solution is 3a+b. They say that the solution is 3.5 x stronger than the normal alkalinity solution in classic Balling ( NasHCO3) - hence I suppose it is Na2CO3 mostly.

I rise alkalinity 1 dKH during 35 hours

Stop dosing 21:00 yesterday. Analyse alkalinity every hour. I will program my KH director to have a nominal value of 7 and let it run without dosing until tomorrow if not the set point is reached before that

In this way - I will be able to report my aquariums alkalinity consumption hour for hour during at least 24 hours

Sincerely Lasse

Thanks, Lasse.

 

[Solo McReefer]

Thread is under Review

Surprised it still has legs

Or hasn't been locked

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Surprised it still has legs

Or hasn't been locked

lol, it was locked for a few days, but important discussions are still taking place.

 

[rtparty]

Ok, 500 g in 5 L is the recipe.

My friend used 303,9 mg of Carbonate mix in 1 l of ultrapure water.

Thus, the recipe is 100 g/L, which is 329 times as much as my friend used.

He got an alk of 10 dKH.

That means the Balling Dosing solution is 3290 dKH, which is reasonable .

If we add 10 mL of that to 100 L (a 10,000 fold dilution) alk will rise by 0.33 dKH.

FM claims it adds 0.5 dKH.

Wow, we found the missing alk. It was never added to the product.

This is shocking, IMO.

Not too shocking IMO. Multiple users kept claiming they were dosing X dKh and then Garf would counter it saying they were dosing Y. For example, someone claiming they were adding 2dkh of alkalinity per day and then Garf would say that is actually only 1.2dkh. (Numbers made up.) We saw this many times in here.

So it makes sense they don't "see" the increase. It was never there in the first place.

It once again shows horrible documentation IMO.

 

[areefer01]

Ok, 500 g in 5 L is the recipe.

My friend used 303,9 mg of Carbonate mix in 1 l of ultrapure water.

Thus, the recipe is 100 g/L, which is 329 times as much as my friend used.

He got an alk of 10 dKH.

That means the Balling Dosing solution is 3290 dKH, which is reasonable .

If we add 10 mL of that to 100 L (a 10,000 fold dilution) alk will rise by 0.33 dKH.

FM claims it adds 0.5 dKH.

Wow, we found the missing alk. It was never added to the product.

This is shocking, IMO.

Well if anyone is testing they can dose the proper amount now and see?

 

[Jari]

I have been following the thread on/off, I would appreciate if someone could recap Are the dosing instructions wrong, and if yes, what are the implications? The famous "broken buffer system" or suggested bolus dosing advantages are wrong - or no one knows? Cheers!

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I have been following the thread on/off, I would appreciate if someone could recap Are the dosing instructions wrong, and if yes, what are the implications? The famous "broken buffer system" or suggested bolus dosing advantages are wrong - or no one knows? Cheers!

The broken buffer system is pure fantasy.

Bolus dosing may grow corals just fine. There’s no apparent data to say if it is better or worse than any other method.

There is no delay in alk detection using bicarbonate, or carbonate, or hydroxide. There is with formate (AFR) and acetate (Salifert all in one).

 

[carbl]

That means the Balling Dosing solution is 3290 dKH, which is reasonable .

If we add 10 mL of that to 100 L (a 10,000 fold dilution) alk will rise by 0.33 dKH.

I am referring to post #471. 1.9dKH increase was measured here with 0.5ml Carbonate Mix solution (according to instructions) per 1 liter of water. That is about 25% less than the promised 2.5dKH.
I have also tried this and come to a similar result. The 0.33dKH at 0.1ml/liter should have resulted in a calculated 1.65dKH increase in my experiment. It could of course be a measurement error, 1.65 is not that so far away from 1.9, but my guess is that the carbonate mix is not always consistent or the recipes have changed.
I wanted to do the same experiment with pure bicarbonate now, just to see if my measuring instruments are correct.
But I think I'll save myself the trouble. There is not a single example where the manufacturer's specifications were correct.
That's really shocking and also sad.

 

[Pod_01]

Ok, 500 g in 5 L is the recipe.

My friend used 303,9 mg of Carbonate mix in 1 l of ultrapure water.

Thus, the recipe is 100 g/L, which is 329 times as much as my friend used.

He got an alk of 10 dKH.

That means the Balling Dosing solution is 3290 dKH, which is reasonable .

If we add 10 mL of that to 100 L (a 10,000 fold dilution) alk will rise by 0.33 dKH.

FM claims it adds 0.5 dKH.

Wow, we found the missing alk. It was never added to the product.

This is shocking, IMO.

Just for completeness, here is what my container shows. This was purchased 6 months ago so it is recent.

Thank you Randy, at least now I know I was not imagining things when using it.
I tried to bump up alk few times and always ended up short… I figured it is the way I mixed it or my math was wrong/ new math.

Also the alk to calcium consumption was always off, nothing compared to the ratios you mentioned!!!
Alk 2.8 dKH to 20 ppm of calcium.

As an aside I just changed to TM Original Balling method and used exactly the same dose as before 70ml. My estimation told me it should have been 120ml!!! I did mix the FM with 5.5L vs 5L so it was always less potent.

 

[SDchris]

If true, this would indicate "missing alkalinity" of 50%, would it not?

Would this also mean the added trace element ratios would be out?

Bolus dosing may grow corals just fine. There’s no apparent data to say if it is better or worse than any other method.

True, but the "table top effect" would indicate that calcification almost comes to a complete stop at a time when it should be highest.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Would this also mean the added trace element ratios would be out?

True, but the "table top effect" would indicate that calcification almost comes to a complete stop at a time when it should be highest.

I don’t know anything about the trace elements they use, or how much, but the alk part having less alk than claimed would make one use more than expected since they are mixed together.

I have not seen evidence of the steady alk effect compared in the same tank that was not getting a bolus dose of alk, so I would be wary of concluding that one gets any special alk plateau.

 

[Pod_01]

Would this also mean the added trace element ratios would be out?

FM Balling light is flexible in this regard. There is a starting ratio they recommend to use.

After that you send in ICP and in case of Alk that uses Trace 3 you use your Iodine value increase the Trace3 or decrease it. It is not fixed.

 

[danimal1211]

Also the alk to calcium consumption was always off, nothing compared to the ratios you mentioned!!!
Alk 2.8 dKH to 20 ppm of calcium.

Which begs the question whether similar discrepancies exist in the calcium part or any other FM products for that matter.

 

[Pod_01]

Which begs the question whether similar discrepancies exist in the calcium part or any other FM products for that matter.

Very true, I suspect it is the Alk that has odd numbers. Just my opinion.
When I switched to TM Original Balling I used the calcium consumption to figure out the dose and it was app. 70ml.

Regardless reputation is important and the optics don’t look good for FM.

Since there are other choices out there it is easy to switch …

It is really in FM court to sort this out, or explain this discrepancy and hopefully it is something other than “Broken buffer system“ or it is secret…

 

[Lasse]

You can never be truly happy - thought that I should be able to report how my system behave during 36 hours without any dosing and get a snapshot of my system's alkalinity needs during this time. Unfortunately I had to change the titration fluid at 9:30pm last night (7/17). since I make it myself, such a change usually involves an adjustment of the displayed value. so this time again. Although manual sampling confirms what the automatic shows, the measurements after 21:00 are not useful, But I have 24 hours of value and it indicates the following:

Between 16/7 at 21:00 and 21:00 on 17/7 my system consumed 1.2 in dKH. This is equal to 21.4 mg/L as CaCO3 (limestone). My water volume is 300 L => total consumption of 6.42 g CaCO3. If my not calcification consumption of alkalinity is around 10% - my system produced around 5,8 g CaCO3 (new limestone) during yesterday.

But the test also indicate when this calcification took place. Between 20240716 21:43 and 20240717 12:43 (15 hours) - the consumption was 0.3 dKH or 25 % of the whole consumption. It means a rate of 0.02 dKH/Hour. Between 20240717 12:43 and 20240717 21:43 (9 hours) - the consumption was 0.9 dKH or a rate of 0.1 dKH/Hour. This indicate that at least in my system and just this day - my calcification rate was around 5 time higher during daytime compared with nighttime

pH curve during this time. Note - the dip in the blue marks is caused by injection of a precipitant for phosphate that always happens 03:14

Interesting is that my daily pH peak normally (with dosing) is around 8.3 but this day (17/7) without dosing it was 8.2. However the lowest reading today was 8.03 - normal daily lowest readings use to be around 8.03 - 8.07. However - there was dosing taking place this night.

Experiment - the blue marking

The results is interesting and I hope I can redo the experiment in the near future.

Sincerely Lasse

 

[SDchris]

my calcification rate was around 5 time higher during daytime compared with nighttime

Do you happen to know the average light/dark ratio for wild coral? I had in my head around 2 or 3.
Your graph looks like a typical 24h alkalinity response. It is polar opposite to the graph posted on post #445