Dosing Baking soda from ATO

[DrBoxedWine]

I made a post last week about dosing calcium and ak, and everyone was very helpful, so thanks everyone I got my calcium and magnesium in line over the weekend. I'll be making a couple small additions tonight to get it fully there, but i'm pretty much good to go now. I just have to maintain at this point.

This weekend my wife got me a $40 coral credit as a bday present and she went down there with me to get it. We went to a place we had never been and well, she seems to have gotten the coral bug She absolutely fell in love with all the Branch-y SPS corals and is talking about the ones she wants to get. So, who am i to argue?

Anyway, i was planning on doing some dosing anyway, but if we're doing some SPS, then it's probably even more important. Right now, we have 6 lps frags. I just started the tank out in August, so it's very new still. I've been dosing AK through my ATO, and i can keep it somewhat steady, between 9.5 and 10.5. and that's just with me eyeballing the amount of baking soda i add. I could really figure out how much to add per gallon of ATO water, and probably lock it in even more. I live in Denver, and it's pretty consistently dry here, and i go through ATO at a somewhat consistent rate. The windows will be closed up the next few months, and our house should be pretty constant.

So, my question... If i got a single BRS doser and used that for Caclcum, and then did magnesium by hand maybe every 2 weeks, and baked baking soda through the ATO, would that work for now? Eventually i'll get more dosing pumps, but the idea of spending $80 on one doser right now is a lot nicer than buying multiple.

 

[MondoBongo]

i would just get your alk where you want it, start kalkwasser through a doser, and call it a day.

for low to moderate demands, kalk along with regular water changes, should keep your calcium and alkalinity stable.

i have a BRS 1.1 mL/h dosing pump i run from a dedicated kalkwasser reservoir, it runs on a timer overnight. then my magnesium i am generally able to keep constant with just weekly water changes.

 

[DrBoxedWine]

Ahh ok, so just do Kalk through a doser? I hadn't thought of that. I read a lot about doing through the ATO, but that seems like a pain to have to clean the ato bucket frequently. I do about a 7% water change every 2 weeks. Think that'll be ok? What kind of jug do you use? How often do you have to mess/add to with the kalk mixture?

Since i'm just getting into this, even if i get a few SPS corals, i'm sure i won't be in the "High demand" category for quite some time, and can deal with extra dosers then.

 

[MondoBongo]

kalk can get you a long way. i have a decent amount of stony corals and two clams, and with regular water changes it is still doing well for me.

i like the kalk through the doser because it lets me decide exactly how much i want. evap rates tend to fluctuate with temperature and season, so it is nice to be able to know how much i am putting in.

you will just have to keep an eye on your mag for a little while until you figure out your consumption rate. i would imagine that would be a fine water change schedule, but test regularly for a few weeks until you get it dialed in.

i actually have a 5 gallon fish tank tucked inside my stand that is just for kalk slurry. i usually refill it with RODI water about once a week. if i had a larger size reservoir, obviously it last longer, but that's the biggest thing i could fit in there next to my sump. so i usually just dump a bunch of kalk powder in it, then fill it up and use the flow of the water being pumped in to stir it. then let it settle, and it doses over night.

 

[DrBoxedWine]

Hmmm... I already have a 5 gallon ATO bucket, no room for another. So you have this on top of your ATO container? How big is your tank?

 

[Sk8r]

Just a note: if you have undissolved kalk in your bucket, you do NOT have to clean the bucket. I'm probably a really slovenly example, but I have a 32 gallon reservoir, and I just drop a pound or so of kalk in, and keep adding ro/di for several months, about 4, until I figure, well, probably a good thing to wash the reservoir---so I hose it out, and restart with another pound of kalk. I use Kent supplements to bring my levels up in the system [tank], and then start the kalk flowing. I just use a simple float valve, but I have a basement sump with a very lively downflow, and about a gallon or more a day evaporation, so I have no problem getting enough kalk in.

 

[DrBoxedWine]

So basically the extra kalk settles in the bottom, and then as you add it stirs it up and saturates the water to the level you want? That doesn't sound difficult at all.

One thing i'm wondering about, is that if i'm adding 5 gallons of kalk water a week, that's basically going to cut my ATO consumption in half. Is that normal?

I'm beginning to think that maybe i could get by dosing it through my ATO, at least until spring (when we open the windows up again and the inside humidity will fluctuate more). I imagined myself having to clean that bucket once a week. But it sounds like i could add kalk to the topoff, and call it good for now.

What do you guys think about that plan?

 

[MondoBongo]

Hmmm... I already have a 5 gallon ATO bucket, no room for another. So you have this on top of your ATO container? How big is your tank?

75 gallon tank with 25 gallon sump volume.

i have this inside my stand, next to my tank. my ATO reservoir is actually next to my stand (outside it) because it is much larger. 20 gallon extra tall tank to be specific. the dimensions were perfect to conceal it in the base of the stand my QT tank sits on, or else i would have gone larger still. i hate hauling buckets, so the less i have to do the better.

my kalk reservoir and ato reservoir were both sized to allow for up to 10 days of completely hands off maintenance. this way, if i need to travel for work or vacation, all my tank sitter needs to do is a visual inspection of the tank, and toss in a little pre-portioned food, and nothing else. as long as the water is staying inside the box, they have no other responsibilities.

So basically the extra kalk settles in the bottom, and then as you add it stirs it up and saturates the water to the level you want? That doesn't sound difficult at all.

yup, that's it! kalk only dissolves at a specific rate in water. the only ways to get more of it to dissolve is to either add more water, or increase the pH of the water with something acidic. other than that, the precipitate just stays at the bottoms until it gets a chance to go in to solution. mind you, you don't want to dose the slurry.

One thing i'm wondering about, is that if i'm adding 5 gallons of kalk water a week, that's basically going to cut my ATO consumption in half. Is that normal?

yup! totally normal.

I'm beginning to think that maybe i could get by dosing it through my ATO, at least until spring (when we open the windows up again and the inside humidity will fluctuate more). I imagined myself having to clean that bucket once a week. But it sounds like i could add kalk to the topoff, and call it good for now.

What do you guys think about that plan?

absolutely a fine system for dosing kalk. many people do it this way. just make sure your ATO pump is up enough off the floor of your top off vessel to stay out of the slurry. you want to dose the water that is saturated, not the stuff laying on the bottom of the tub (1 - 2" is usually plenty). and make sure that when you add water or stir it up, you give it about an hour to settle back down before you begin dosing to the tank again.

 

[DrBoxedWine]

does kalk pretty much just only dissolve to desirable levels? How does someone who lives in say, Miami, where it's 100% humidy all the time, get success as someone like me, in Denver, where it's single digit humidity? Seems like my tank would dose a whole lot more kalk since i'm losing so much water through the air.

 

[MondoBongo]

Yes it has a saturation point. Anything dissolved in water will have a saturation point. You can actually see this action with super saturated sugar solution. Say that three times fast.

You can saturate sugar water to the point where it won't hold any more in solution, add a seed crystal and watch it precipitate. Same idea. Just that the saturation point for kalk is much lower than sugar.

Kalk is pretty safe in amounts you would add through top off. As always monitor and test though. That is one the reasons I chose to use a separate dosing pump. I can easily set an upper bound for what the tank gets in a day, although again, it is pretty safe stuff on the whole.

 

[DrBoxedWine]

Thanks a bunch! I'll get this setup next when I return from vacation. I'll be hooking up an apex next weekend so i'll set up the ph probe as a safety. Thanks again, this was very helpful!

 

[DrBoxedWine]

Also, that sugar water thing... Is there a way to do that? Lol

 

[MondoBongo]

Also, that sugar water thing... Is there a way to do that? Lol

you can do it with water, sugar, and your stove.

it also works with salt (and many other things, but sugar and salt are the easiest for obvious reasons). you will have to check on the exact ratios. this is basically the same process you use to make rock candy.

http://www.sciencebob.com/experiments/rockcandy.php
http://www.ehow.com/how_6199355_make-supersaturated-solution-sugar.html


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1y3bKIOkcmk

 

[DrBoxedWine]

you can do it with water, sugar, and your stove.

it also works with salt (and many other things, but sugar and salt are the easiest for obvious reasons). you will have to check on the exact ratios. this is basically the same process you use to make rock candy.

http://www.sciencebob.com/experiments/rockcandy.php
http://www.ehow.com/how_6199355_make-supersaturated-solution-sugar.html


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1y3bKIOkcmk

Thanks! I'll be trying this. So I have another question, I think I must not quite get how this works... How will my levels stay constant as the seasons change and humidity changes in the house? Seems like as the more water evaporates, my levels with increase relative to times when less water evaporates.

 

[MondoBongo]

so that is a possibility, and something you have to occasionally test for to keep up with.

there comes a point with kalk where you won't be able to dose enough of it to your tank to meet your demands. but that is generally after a decent stocking density.

there is a large sweet spot for the dosing, but something you will need to gauge. dosing through top off you will have to set your levels where you want them with a buffer, then do a couple days of consecutive testing, and adjust the amount of kalk in your top off water accordingly.

as the seasons change, test again. if it is too high, then use less dissolved kalk, if it is too low, use more.

that's one of the reasons i went with the external doser, it is not coupled to the top off amount directly.

 

[DrBoxedWine]

Thanks sir. I don't really have the room for a 2nd 5 gallon bucket, so maybe just kalk from the ato for now until I have some monies to get a 2 part dosing system set up. Thanks again!!