How to dose kalkwasser with dosing pump?

[Biologic]

I don’t have a ph controller, and I use a kamoer x1 on my 10g tank to dose kalk.I mix up like 100oz rodi to a little more than a 1/4 teaspoon of kalk, so it’s far from saturated. But plenty for my tank currently as I only have a few small frags.

Method - for 2 weeks I daily topped off the water manually and recorded the amount, took the average. And pulled it back about 10-15%. That gave me my evaporation rate which is fairly consistent year round. Small manual top off or waterchange as needed. I use the kamoer to dose all of my daily evaporation water with the low kalk dose. 12 Evenly spaced doses all day long. While I still get a ph swing, the day time rides 8.3-4, night 8.2ish. So I’m happy. Eventually I’d like to get a ph controller and then do something similar to the aci style dose only at night, but I’d rather try to do something with the kamoer x1 pro or hydros than an apex. I would try the dose now only at night, but I feel the increased dose rate would spike the ph at night and I’m not going to do that without monitoring the ph.

Nice! Sounds like you got a good rhythm. The pH controller for you mostly serves as a safety back up. I mean technically many people dose 2-part without a controller for years, I figure to just offer this as a PSA. Kalkwasser has had a bad reputation because people use it in a ATO with a float switch, of course it fails. The pH controller helps me sleep at night. I use an Apex so I get monitoring along with that.

 

[KStatefan]

Thanks! Do you wait to refill it when it’s almost done? Or like half way? Also do you ever clean it out and start again? I hear over time the saturation will lower.

Randy did not find that in his test. Results are in this article

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-01/rhf/index.htm

 

[Ef4life]

Nice! Sounds like you got a good rhythm. The pH controller for you mostly serves as a safety back up. I mean technically many people dose 2-part without a controller for years, I figure to just offer this as a PSA. Kalkwasser has had a bad reputation because people use it in a ATO with a float switch, of course it fails. The pH controller helps me sleep at night. I use an Apex so I get monitoring along with that.

Yes my other tank I dose 2part manually still and never had a problem. But that’s also exactly why I never used kalk before with an ato, I forget to turn it off enough just doing a w/c kalk would be bad. On the doser it’s pretty much dial it in on just rodi as your ato then add incremental amounts of kalk to the reservoir each refill to increase your ph/alk until I got where it needed to be and I called it good, the kamoers have been reliable for me since the x1 came out.

I’d like to further tune my system with a ph moniter though eventually, but right now it’s working. But it does make a very cheap, simple, ime reliable pico/nano setup, one $60 doser to act as both your dosing pump and ato. Only 1 reservoir needed etc.

 

[Biologic]

Randy did not find that in his test. Results are in this article

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-01/rhf/index.htm

I actually have never read this article from RHF. This is really incredible data. Comforting knowing that I do not need to put a CO2 scrubber venting system on a trash can lol.

 

[Cantusaurus]

All for Reef is about 25x more potent than saturated kakwasser, so you'd be looking to start at about 122 mL of kalk per day, and adjust from there as needed.

Ok, thank you so much! I started yesterday with 50 ml. But I’ll move it up to 90, and keep testing. I’ll still dose a little bit of all for Reef (about .7 ml) in order to get a bit of the other benefits it has.