Kalkwasser question

jbrady429 · Dec 21, 2015

Hello everyone!

I'm considering using kalkwasser in the top-off water for my tank and am wondering if it would be suitable for my system. It's a 15 gallon sps-only tank, with 1 gallon/week evaporation (replaced by ATO). Would that much kalkwasser be a problem?

Thanks!

hawkinsrgk · Dec 22, 2015

I am not sure this can be answered other than a guess. There are too many unknowns about your tanks consumption. When I started dosing limewater this is what I did and it worked for me

1. Test your alk, ph and calcium
2. Add kalk to your topoff until your ph is around 10 in your topoff. When the lime is totally saturated the ph will be around 12.2 to 12.4
3. If the ph in your tank approaches 8.3-8.4 or if your alk is higher than what you keep it at then add water to your topoff without lime
4. After a week you will know if you added too much or too little
5. Assuming you didn't add enough then do all the steps over again except make your topoff with a ph of 11

Some people will probably disagree with this approach because it is conservative. Just keep this in mind. It is very easy to overdose when you first start dosing Kalk

Do a google search on Kalk overdose and it seems to come down to one of three things
1. Equipment failure
2. Not being conservative
3. Not paying attention

jbrady429 · Dec 22, 2015

hawkinsrgk said:
I am not sure this can be answered other than a guess. There are too many unknowns about your tanks consumption. When I started dosing limewater this is what I did and it worked for me

1. Test your alk, ph and calcium
2. Add kalk to your topoff until your ph is around 10 in your topoff. When the lime is totally saturated the ph will be around 12.2 to 12.4
3. If the ph in your tank approaches 8.3-8.4 or if your alk is higher than what you keep it at then add water to your topoff without lime
4. After a week you will know if you added too much or too little
5. Assuming you didn't add enough then do all the steps over again except make your topoff with a ph of 11

Some people will probably disagree with this approach because it is conservative. Just keep this in mind. It is very easy to overdose when you first start dosing Kalk

Do a google search on Kalk overdose and it seems to come down to one of three things
1. Equipment failure
2. Not being conservative
3. Not paying attention

Thanks for the response. The tank right now consists of eight frags (Acropora, seriotopora, montipora, and stylophora), all of which are growing very well. I'm dosing about 4ml/day of Reef Carbonate and Reef Complete, so I suppose it would be possible to overdose the tank with 1 gallon/week of kalkwasser. Come to think of it, I should be able to directly compare those doses with a little math. I'll give that a shot as well.

FlyinBryan · Dec 22, 2015

I love Kalk. I use it on all my tanks. Both 150 and a 30!!
Good luck keep us posted!

Fieryfrog · Dec 22, 2015

I have to admit. I actually stopped dosing Kalk. And started manually dosing Reefgrow Calcium, Magnesium and Alk. I thought I would try it, and have really good luck. I was always scared of something going wrong and killing off coral. But I am a bit of a worrier to begin with.

Randy Holmes-Farley · Dec 22, 2015

jbrady429 said:
Hello everyone!

I'm considering using kalkwasser in the top-off water for my tank and am wondering if it would be suitable for my system. It's a 15 gallon sps-only tank, with 1 gallon/week evaporation (replaced by ATO). Would that much kalkwasser be a problem?

Thanks!

You can make it as dilute as you want. Add just enough calcium hydroxide to the ATO water to meet the alkalinity demands in the tank.

If you use full strength limewater, that's only 1 dKH per day with your evaporation.

Your current 4 mL of Reef Complete adds about 0.8 dKH per day, so maybe use a little bit less than 2 level teaspoons of limewater per gallon of top off water.

hawkinsrgk · Dec 22, 2015

FlyinBryan said:
I love Kalk. I use it on all my tanks. Both 150 and a 30!!
Good luck keep us posted!

Same here. I got a kalk stirrer and absolutely love it. First started using kalk because the ph was lower than what I wanted

jbrady429 · Dec 22, 2015

Thanks for all of the great information! One question: my current understanding is that kalkwasser should be used up the same day it is made (ideally) because it will react with CO2. This is not a problem with a kalk reactor/stirrer though. Is that correct?

Thanks again for all of the great responses!

gcrawford · Dec 22, 2015

I use a Kalk reactor inline with my ATO. Absolutely works wonderfully with my cal reactor. I use Mrs Wages and it's like $2 at Walmart mart in the canning area.