Instructions for adding calcium, alkalinity and magnesium

[neuroslicer]

Several of you have requested the recipes and instructions for adding your own "do-it-yourself" mixtures of calcium, bicarbonate (alkalinity) and magnesium that I handed out at the meeting at my home last year. Here are the links to those documents:

http://www.rhodes.edu/biology/blundon/diyrecipe.doc

http://www.rhodes.edu/biology/blundon/diyadditives.xls

I did not author the article but edited it slightly. You can find the original article by Randy Farley on Reef Central under the Reef Chemistry Forum thread.

Magnesium chloride and calcium chloride can be bought from Buckeyefield Supply or TwoPartSolutions (see the links on the handout). Dowflakes (calcium chloride) can be bought in 50 pound bags at many swimming pool stores (there's one in Germantown near the corner of Germantown Rd. and Poplar). If 50 pounds is a bit too much for you, I have bags of Dowflakes in 2.5 cup amounts (enough for one gallon of calcium solution) for $2 each. (I've got over 30 SPS frags ready to go if you're interested in making a frag and calcium run to my house!)

I've been dosing with these DIY 2 part solutions for over a year, with tremendous rates of growth. I also use kalkwasser (Mrs. wages pickling lime solution) for top off.

Let me know if you have any questions about adding these DIY chemicals.

Jay

 

[Zann]

i have been useing sea lab 28
keeps from haveing to guess how much to use and it adds all the trace elements and calcium strontium also automatic.
you put it in you tank and it dissolves to replace elements as they are needed
when they are gone just add more.

sence i have used this everything has checked at good levels

 

[fifamickey]

Re: Instructions for adding calcium, alkalinity and magnesium

I have bags of Dowflakes in 2.5 cup amounts (enough for one gallon of calcium solution) for $2 each. (I've got over 30 SPS frags ready to go if you're interested in making a frag and calcium run to my house!)
Jay [/B]

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