Calcium reactor plus kalk stirrer??

[shiftline]

I currently run a calcium reactor which keeps things fairly stable. My Alk was dropping so I started dosing about 28ml of Alk from midnight to 9am now my Alk is very stable

My new issue is that my PH is ok the low side. (7.66-8)

I am building a diy kalk stirrer and was debating doing this at night.. the downside is it may up my CA as well

Is it a bad idea to use both CA reactor and a Kalk stirrer? Shlold I pick one or the other or try and find the magic combination of the two?

Or just go back to good old dosing


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[Jstaff123]

I'm in the same boat; coral demand is outgrowing my Ca reactor, and also dealing with low ph. Picked up an avast Kalk stirrer but haven't installed it yet.. You're definitely not alone in this issue.

 

[shiftline]

Do you plan on running both at the same time?

How loud is the motor on the avast one? Can you hear it running? Here is the start to my DIY one.. its a tad loud for me though! (still in build/test phase).. im still debating the Avast K1.. so let me know how you like it and its its truly silent!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urVZQYxMDqw


Let me know how you like it and how you find using it with the CARX


My worry is that i dose alk at night to up PH, and level out CARX.. but Kalk is essentially doing both much like the CA reactor.. so even if i up the kalk and turn CA down i'm not sure if ill have a balanced CA/Alk uptake from the corals.

 

[Potatohead]

The alk you are dosing, is it sodium carbonate, or bicarbonate?

 

[Khazmodain]

If you're having low alk issues but Ca is staying in line while running a CaRx I think you're going to end up pushing your Ca too high by dripping kalk. I've run both together before on a heavy SPS tank and it always felt like a battle to get both Ca and alk dialed in and kept stable. I eventually opted for a calcium reactor combined with 3 part dosing to fine tune parameters.

 

[shiftline]

Good question. I have both.. and cant recall which one i mixed up.. Good point though.. i should be using the one that has the larger effect on PH

 

[gus6464]

Why can't you just add a second chamber to your carx?

 

[shiftline]

Already tried that. It did raise the ph a bit. Also added a settling / drip cup.

I do realizes I should have finer stuff in the second chamber however I did have an extra container of the normal size stuff that I used for now

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[gus6464]

Already tried that. It did raise the ph a bit. Also added a settling / drip cup.

I do realizes I should have finer stuff in the second chamber however I did have an extra container of the normal size stuff that I used for now

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Co2 scrubbing via second chamber doesn't work very well if the media is large. You need the smallest media you can get for a second scrubbing chamber. I recommend the smallest arm media.

 

[jda]

Keeping two tuned is very hard. A CaRx that size should be able to supply a 2000G sps tank for a few months - just melt the media faster.

There really is no substitute for fresh air to get PH up. If you really are worried about it, look that way. I have messes around with everything and decided to either 1). stop checking it or 2). fresh air. Now I just ignore it, but we also moved to Colorado where the weather is awesome and we have windows open all the time.

What kind of media are you using in the reactor? If it is man-made, then I might suggest that you try some natural for a while - the middle sized stuff. It could fix most of your issues very easily. That media looks pretty big. I have not had good luck with man-made or the extra coarse media - I find that it is hard to melt and does not melt very consistently. I am back on the ARM coarse for a while. I would use the fine before I went extra coarse again.

 

[jda]

If you are worried that you are losing CO2 to the tank, you might be able to mod your CaRx to stop/help this. A reactor like a Korallin is reverse flow and has about a one-inch gap in the top where excess CO2 can build up so that you can see it and tune your reactor better. This did help my PH a bit - more than a second chamber did.

 

[shiftline]

Well I swapped the media in the second chamber to the tiny ARM so we will see how it changes it

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[locito277]

http://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.ed...The_combination_of_the_Kalkwasser_reacto.docx
Interesting rad


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