Can you dose too much kalk?

[Overland04]

I see that most people who dose kalk use it as their top off water. If I have a light load, is it possible to overdose with using that method? If so how to I use kalk in smaller amounts?

 

[seapug]

the only way to really overdose it is to add it too fast. Setting it up on a slow drip is pretty foolproof.

 

[mflamb]

If it drives your pH up to high, you used too much.
I run all my top off water through kalk, about 8 gallons per day.

 

[mikesin]

Hello, it takes a little time to figure out your calcium demand - just remember (when mixing your stock solution) 1 gallon of water can only absorb 2 teaspoons of kalkwasser (roughly). The rest of the kalk will just precipitate and sink to the bottom of your mixing container. you don't have to add the entire 2 teaspoons, you can try 1 teaspoon per gallon and see how that goes. Just dose slow, test your mag, calc, dh and PH. when we first started dosing kalk, we used an old 1 gal. distilled plastic container. Super glued an air line valve into the side (not bottom) to control the drip. added 1/2 teaspoon of kalk, shook it, let it sit a bit and let it drip over night. As our calcium demand grew so did the amount kalk we mixed.
hope this helps.

 

[fishnut321]

just run it into your tank with a low flow over time and watch your ph, you should be able to calculate how much you can add safely after that

 

[Overland04]

I just built a diy kalk reactor so ill just dump the entire container into the reactor and let it stir. I know the water will be at full saturation as it comes out and I will have no control of the levels if I use it for all of my top-off.

In this situation can I overdose? If so how would I cut back using a reactor?

Sorry about not throwing in the reactor on my first post

 

[IslandCrow]

It depends on what you mean by overdose. Even with a low demand tank, it's unlikely that it will drive your calcium up very high, if at all. Kalk can at best only keep up with the calcium demand in most tanks. Of course, as someone else mentioned, you do have to keep an eye on your PH. If it starts to get too high, you'll have to dose less.

As far as controlling the dosing with a kalk reactor, the only way I know of is to dose less, which may mean that it can no longer be your sole source of top-off.