dosing question

[thisoldfish]

Hi all-
christmas dosing question..

I have a 65 mixed reef (SPS/softies/fish) w 30g sump; have been dripping kalk for past year and maintaining dkh around 7/calc 440; however now that my birdsnests has gone nuts the requirements have been increasing and I've found it harder to stay consistent with drip method.

I just got (christmas present..) BRS 2 part system with CaCl2 and Na2Co3, plus Mag. Used the calculator to figure the correction doses and added the calc/carbonate yesterday morning. (I added 1/2 the dose of carbonate correction to ease into it and see where it put me). Today I checked and because my dkh is 7.5 I added some additional carbonate.

2 questions:
1) I poured the Na2Co3 into sump- but it was in the easiest to access area but probably lower flow area of sump (though the sump still has plenty of flow). I noticed as soon as I poured it in it precipitated out, the water got cloudy there and now there is some precipitant 'dust' on the bottom of the sump.
-is this normal? Or, did I just not pour it into area of high enough flow? Poured too much at once?

2) I'm measuring every 12 hours for a few days to get an idea of what calc/dkh/ph is doing. Do I just basically see how much I've needed to get my dkh to goal of 8 over a few days and divide by number of days to figure daily requirement? Not really sure how to do this. I'm assuming I just manually dose until I know how much I need every day?

Any/all advice much appreciated and hope everyone is having a nice holiday season.

brad

 

[Flippers4pups]

I've never had much luck dosing sodium carbonate, as it would always precipitate and coat everything in the sump. Sump walls, heaters and pumps. Just not worth the little bump in PH that's only temporary anyway.

Switch back to sodium bicarbonate in solution and the problem went away.

I use kalkwasser in my ATO reservoir and use sodium bicarbonate for alkalinity adjustments as needed.

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

Using this calculator:

http://reef.diesyst.com/chemcalc/chemcalc.html

Works very well.

 

[thisoldfish]

thanks Don,

I was going to just start doing the kalk/ATO thing but I like to have my ATO reservoir with an auto-topoff from the RODI, so I'd either have to bag the auto-top off and just make batches/let it run down or try and figure out how much water I lose daily and keep up with the kalk.

I figured I was making my life easier by getting the 2 part and (once I figure out daily needs) getting the calcium and alk on pumps.

Does the sodium carb precipitate less with a slower addition? IE- I just kind of dumped it into the sump.. perhaps on a drip it would fare better?

Anyone else out there using the BRS setup with the sodium carb (soda ash)?

Thanks

brad

 

[Flippers4pups]

thanks Don,

I was going to just start doing the kalk/ATO thing but I like to have my ATO reservoir with an auto-topoff from the RODI, so I'd either have to bag the auto-top off and just make batches/let it run down or try and figure out how much water I lose daily and keep up with the kalk.

I figured I was making my life easier by getting the 2 part and (once I figure out daily needs) getting the calcium and alk on pumps.

Does the sodium carb precipitate less with a slower addition? IE- I just kind of dumped it into the sump.. perhaps on a drip it would fare better?

Anyone else out there using the BRS setup with the sodium carb (soda ash)?

Thanks

brad

Perhaps the sodium carbonate could be on a doser. Slowly dosed in a high flow area. Or dripped in over the course of a day.

 

[thisoldfish]

yeah- only one way to find out.. if it doesn't work then I'll head back to the kalk. The issue I was getting w kalk was that at target alkalinity my calcium was cranking too high (averaging around 470 with dkH 8-ish). So I'd rather be able to better control adding alk without calcium in a fixed ratio

anyway, thanks for input- hopefully the slower drip works

 

[saltyhog]

I used to dose sodium carbonate manually and it had to be done in a high flow area with some patience. Now I dose it via dosing pump in to my return chamber without any issue with precipitation.

 

[Brew12]

thanks Don,

I was going to just start doing the kalk/ATO thing but I like to have my ATO reservoir with an auto-topoff from the RODI, so I'd either have to bag the auto-top off and just make batches/let it run down or try and figure out how much water I lose daily and keep up with the kalk.

I figured I was making my life easier by getting the 2 part and (once I figure out daily needs) getting the calcium and alk on pumps.

Does the sodium carb precipitate less with a slower addition? IE- I just kind of dumped it into the sump.. perhaps on a drip it would fare better?

Anyone else out there using the BRS setup with the sodium carb (soda ash)?

Thanks

brad

I dose with the soda ash. I use an auto doser so it gets added very slowly so I don't have any precipitation issues. I also use auto dosers to add Kalkwasser. I dose 1400mL per day of saturated kalk along with roughly 50ml of each 2-part.

In my opinion the best way to determine how much you need to add each day is to do no dosing for a day. Take an alk and calc measurement 24 hours apart to measure your drop. Then use a calculator such as what @Flippers4pups linked to see how much you need to add each day.

 

[thisoldfish]

great- thanks. That's the plan.