FishyFishFish
Valuable Member
This is a bit of a tight wallet question, but is more about reducing waste rather than saving money.
I have a 13g Nano (a Fluval Evo) that is only a couple of months old. Alk reduces very slightly at about 1dkh per week, from about 8.3 down to about 7.3. So far, I have been adding a little bit of a baking soda solution to bring it up again. My salt is standard IO so I could probably raise the Alk with water changes, but my nitrates are only 5ppm so I don't want to drive them down too low.
I recently bought a bag of BRS kalk, mainly to paste over what I thought might be some aiptasia, and now I have almost a whole bag of kalk left. My PH is on the lower side (7.8) so I thought that it might be better to dose a bit of kalk rather than the baking soda.
The only question I have is that my Ca is reasonable at around 420-450 (with testing error). I'm aware that I'd probably be better off with soda ash but can anyone see any problems with me using the kalk that I already have first? I will only need to add tiny amounts (and I'm also wondering if I'm wasting my time adding anything at all) so can I assume that the Ca rise will be minimal/irrelevant? My tank has no fish yet but has some zoas, GSP and only a few LPS (Candy Cane, red war coral and neon merulina).
I have a 13g Nano (a Fluval Evo) that is only a couple of months old. Alk reduces very slightly at about 1dkh per week, from about 8.3 down to about 7.3. So far, I have been adding a little bit of a baking soda solution to bring it up again. My salt is standard IO so I could probably raise the Alk with water changes, but my nitrates are only 5ppm so I don't want to drive them down too low.
I recently bought a bag of BRS kalk, mainly to paste over what I thought might be some aiptasia, and now I have almost a whole bag of kalk left. My PH is on the lower side (7.8) so I thought that it might be better to dose a bit of kalk rather than the baking soda.
The only question I have is that my Ca is reasonable at around 420-450 (with testing error). I'm aware that I'd probably be better off with soda ash but can anyone see any problems with me using the kalk that I already have first? I will only need to add tiny amounts (and I'm also wondering if I'm wasting my time adding anything at all) so can I assume that the Ca rise will be minimal/irrelevant? My tank has no fish yet but has some zoas, GSP and only a few LPS (Candy Cane, red war coral and neon merulina).
