Dosing dry soda ash/calcium/magnesium

[KleineVampir]

Recently I've been having trouble keeping snails in the tank, and I haven't known why. Today I came up with a theory: What if putting dry soda ash or calcium directly into the sump ISN'T a good idea? I know you are supposed to mix it. At first I only had 1 little pump going into my tank. By the time that water could get into my tank, it'd have plenty of time to mix in. Well now I've upped it to 3 and I'm putting in even more soda ash at the same time. (I think the soda ash is the main problem.)

So the question is, if you put 3 tablespoons of soda ash into your sump and you have about 600 GPH going into the tank...would that be hard on the snails? What would the effect of it be?

 

[KleineVampir]

Also...the pumps are on the other side of the sump which is 20 gallons. Then the pumps don't even pump directly into the tank. They pump into a HOB fuge that's about 5 gallons. So I thought I was safe dosing dry stuff that way.

 

[KleineVampir]

How should I dose it? Do the same thing except dissolve it in RO water first?

 

[KleineVampir]

Looks like nobody wants to comment on this since probably everybody just follows the directions and mixes it with RO water. But I'll tell you what I'm gonna do. I'm getting the 1 gallon jugs from BRS and I'm going to pre mix my elements (Soda ash, calcium, and magnesium) before I put them in my sump. In the past I may have gotten away with it because if I only had 200 GPH of return pump, it was probably reasonably safe. But now with 600 GPH it is probably getting in there a little too quick to be adding dry powder to the sump.

So in the absence of information I'm just going to play it safe like apparently everybody else is. That way I can feel good about what I'm doing and if my snails still have problems then at least it isn't this.

 

[SPS_ONLY]

Not sure if its directly correlated to killing your inhabitants but I think it has always been recommend to mix it in RO water for it completely dissolve rather than dumping the powder in directly in concentrated amounts.

Like what you stated above, I simply just premix it in a gallon jug and dose it into my tank with a doser.

 

[KleineVampir]

Not sure if its directly correlated to killing your inhabitants but I think it has always been recommend to mix it in RO water for it completely dissolve rather than dumping the powder in directly in concentrated amounts.

Like what you stated above, I simply just premix it in a gallon jug and dose it into my tank with a doser.

Yeah...One more thing I can do right and one less thing I can do wrong.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Recently I've been having trouble keeping snails in the tank, and I haven't known why. Today I came up with a theory: What if putting dry soda ash or calcium directly into the sump ISN'T a good idea? I know you are supposed to mix it. At first I only had 1 little pump going into my tank. By the time that water could get into my tank, it'd have plenty of time to mix in. Well now I've upped it to 3 and I'm putting in even more soda ash at the same time. (I think the soda ash is the main problem.)

So the question is, if you put 3 tablespoons of soda ash into your sump and you have about 600 GPH going into the tank...would that be hard on the snails? What would the effect of it be?

It definitely isn't a good idea, but I don't know if it is causing the organism issues you report.

It is far more likely to cause precipitation of calcium carbonate than if you dissolved it first.

 

[SeaDweller]

I sometimes add a few tbsp of baking soda directly into my tank, and nothing happens other than my alk going up. I don't see any ill effects even when it falls directly onto my acros.

 

[KleineVampir]

It definitely isn't a good idea, but I don't know if it is causing the organism issues you report.

It is far more likely to cause precipitation of calcium carbonate than if you dissolved it first.

Ok. Hey while we're at it, do I need to have magnesium sulfate as well as the magnesium chloride? So far I've just been using the chloride. I'm wondering if that's part of the problem with this tank.