Kalk and manual top offs?

[The_Skrimp]

Hey folks
So my tank is developing great right now. It’s a 50gal DT with maybe 15 gals in the sump and i wanted to start dosing a little bit of Kalk to the water. I don’t think I actually need to dose quite yet as all my corals are small frags so they aren’t consuming alk or calcium at a high rate at all. But i wanted to mix a little into my top off water because my PH stays around 7.9 and i wanted to try and push that up to at least 8 if not 8.3 just to get the corals to grow better.
my calcium is 420
my alk is 9

my main question is: can I add a small amount of Kalk to my top off water to slowly start raising these numbers? I don’t have an ATO so I’m manually topping off. I’m topping off once a day At about a rate of one quart a day but am willing to top off more frequently to decrease the amount of Kalk I’m adding at a time. Could i possibly add a small amount like a half a teaspoon per gallon just to push the numbers up a hair?

thanks guys!

 

[Oropher]

Congrats for your tank's development!

You could try this calculator just to give an idea what will happen if you add kalkwasser:

Kalk Contribution Calculator

Aquarium calculator; Estimate the contribution of a kalk solution towards the calcium and alkalinity of a system.

www.hamzasreef.com

Happy reefing.

 

[The_Skrimp]

Awesome! Thanks for the calculator. That will definitely help me figure out how much to use. Do you foresee a problem adding it in manually with my top offs? I know some people drip it in but I’ve been topping my water off just dumping in a quart at a time when I get up in the mornings. If I do it twice a day instead would dumping half a quart of Kalk water into my tank create issues for my coral or fish?

 

[BlennyTime]

The tricky thing would be to make sure you got it fully dissolved before you mixed it in. Undisolved kalk powder can burn corals.

I’d probably just dose calcium and alk 2-part as needed, unless you wanted to do an ATO. Or mix up a big batch of saturated kalk and “cut” it with. RO water to the desired strength. There are builds that are small/not very expensive (I had one built around a Home Depot bucket on one tank that was less than $40).