MountainManReef
New member
Hi,
I have an older K1 Kalk Stirrer (probably 2-3 years at this point.) which has been giving me fits lately, and I am having sincere doubts about its effects on my reef.
I have about 90 total gallons, but only about 30 of this is actual display and all of my corals are fairly small frags. I've been dosing crazy amounts of two-part solution to keep up with demand. I run anywhere between 2-3 cups of Kalk in the reactor and my evaporation rate is about 2 gallons per day. Water is supplied from my ATO reservoir by a peristaltic 50ml per minute pump. It seems as though I am not successfully using kalk as a buffer at all.
To further this evidence my topoff system got stuck on (and by stuck on I mean I stupidly clicked my apex over from "auto" to "on") overnight. I expected to have major problems stemming from a major overdose of kalk. Despite at least 7 gallons of extra water being dosed (this is just what I pulled out of my sump) and a ton of water on the floor, my water never got cloudy, and when I tested later that day all of of my parameters were on the low side.
This is befuddling to say the last.
Very recently I feel as though I have had to mess with the reactor every day. I go into my fish room and I notice that the stir rod is stuck in one place. It's like my kalk is getting extremely thick and muddy at the bottom of the reactor, to the point that the motor is not strong enough to fight through it. I pull the lid off, and the stir rod is stuck so much that it comes off the motor. So I slosh it around manually enough that it can turn again, but usually the next day I have the same problem.
Currently running my reactor provides me no noticeable benefit, and is more trouble than it's worth.
Do any K1 users, or the Avast staff have any suggestions for me on how to resolve these issues and reap the many benefits of limewater?
I have an older K1 Kalk Stirrer (probably 2-3 years at this point.) which has been giving me fits lately, and I am having sincere doubts about its effects on my reef.
I have about 90 total gallons, but only about 30 of this is actual display and all of my corals are fairly small frags. I've been dosing crazy amounts of two-part solution to keep up with demand. I run anywhere between 2-3 cups of Kalk in the reactor and my evaporation rate is about 2 gallons per day. Water is supplied from my ATO reservoir by a peristaltic 50ml per minute pump. It seems as though I am not successfully using kalk as a buffer at all.
To further this evidence my topoff system got stuck on (and by stuck on I mean I stupidly clicked my apex over from "auto" to "on") overnight. I expected to have major problems stemming from a major overdose of kalk. Despite at least 7 gallons of extra water being dosed (this is just what I pulled out of my sump) and a ton of water on the floor, my water never got cloudy, and when I tested later that day all of of my parameters were on the low side.
This is befuddling to say the last.
Very recently I feel as though I have had to mess with the reactor every day. I go into my fish room and I notice that the stir rod is stuck in one place. It's like my kalk is getting extremely thick and muddy at the bottom of the reactor, to the point that the motor is not strong enough to fight through it. I pull the lid off, and the stir rod is stuck so much that it comes off the motor. So I slosh it around manually enough that it can turn again, but usually the next day I have the same problem.
Currently running my reactor provides me no noticeable benefit, and is more trouble than it's worth.
Do any K1 users, or the Avast staff have any suggestions for me on how to resolve these issues and reap the many benefits of limewater?
