Problems dosing lye in my aquarium.

[Daniel Rosenwinkel]

I made a youtube video to explain this more easily. Basically I'm dosing lye and it's immediately clumping up into little white clouds. Since lye is so strong I'm worried those little clouds could be bad if my fish nip at them or if they get caught in my coral.

I'm thinking I can either dilute it down, switch to soda ash, make a combination of soda ash and lye solution or dose a large amount of Kalkwasser solution with a dosing pump (I don't like dosing kalkwasser via ATO since it's inconsistent and isn't great for the pump.)

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I don’t know how concentrated you are making it, but I give recipes here:

Second New DIY Two Part Recipe with Higher pH Boost

In a previous thread, I posted a true two part DIY recipe: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/new-diy-two-part-recipes-with-higher-ph-boost.344500/ But some folks may want to just swap the new ingredient into my 2/3 part recipe (as used by BRS, for example). Here's the original recipe link...

www.reef2reef.com

In general, diluting it more and adding it to a higher flow area where it can mix in fast is desirable.

 

[Daniel Rosenwinkel]

gotcha thanks for the response Randy! I was doing 18 grams of lye per cup of water, I'm going to try diluting it down to 18 grams of lye per 4 cups of water.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Sounds good. Let us know if it helps.

 

[Solo McReefer]

gotcha thanks for the response Randy! I was doing 18 grams of lye per cup of water, I'm going to try diluting it down to 18 grams of lye per 4 cups of water.

Did it work?

 

[Chris L]

Hello, You said you don't want to use kalk in an ATO. Have you considered using a simple kamoer doser that way you can set exactly the amount per day? If you want you could split up your entire day dose regiment into 12 points.

 

[Daniel Rosenwinkel]

Diluting it down did work!

 

[Daniel Rosenwinkel]

Hello, You said you don't want to use kalk in an ATO. Have you considered using a simple kamoer doser that way you can set exactly the amount per day? If you want you could split up your entire day dose regiment into 12 points.

The only reason i’m not inclined to this method is because to store that much kalk water I would basically need another ATO reservoir

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Diluting it down did work!

Glad to hear that!