Keeping up with Ca/Alk

MrHarvard

MrHarvard

"ship it"
I am brainstorming my plan for keeping up with Ca & Alk in my tank. I have a 29g cube that I will be heavily stocking with SPS over the next 6 months. I currently only have 5 acros in it and a couple of sweet shrooms so im pretty confident biweekly water changes should be able to maintain the levels right now. I will be adding a few more over the next week so I will probably be adding ESV kalkwasser to my ATO to keep up with it then. I haven't decided on whether I'll be using a doser or Ca reactor when that time comes. I would like to know if anyone is using there ATO with kalk water to maintain their levels and if so whats your routine and how's your tank stocked. The tank is still in its earlier stages and growing coralline like crazy so I will have to keep up with that as well as the corals needs. I think the ATO route should be able to handle this and a med stock but won'tknow for sure until I start monitoring and testing. Thoughts?
 
Oh and obviously Ph could become an issue depending on the amount of kalk i have to use, so that's another aspect to consider.
 
I used to run KALK on my ATO, but I hated all the residue it left on the pump and hoses. It just looked very weird and bad. Plus I heard that it can eat away at your pumps. Regardless, I now run it with a doser and I just measured calcium and ALK for a few weeks to figure out how much to add daily.

I'm at a about 3 ml a day.
 
Shame on me! I just dose 1 time a day. 50 ml ca/alk per day on 120 and already at 85 ml each per day on 300. I will be going to my CaRx for 300, but I just need to hook up.
 
Webmanny said:
I used to run KALK on my ATO, but I hated all the residue it left on the pump and hoses. It just looked very weird and bad. Plus I heard that it can eat away at your pumps. Regardless, I now run it with a doser and I just measured calcium and ALK for a few weeks to figure out how much to add daily.

I'm at a about 3 ml a day.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the response. I know what u mean about the residue but the price u pay I guess.
 
Webmanny said:
I used to run KALK on my ATO, but I hated all the residue it left on the pump and hoses. It just looked very weird and bad. Plus I heard that it can eat away at your pumps. Regardless, I now run it with a doser and I just measured calcium and ALK for a few weeks to figure out how much to add daily.

I'm at a about 3 ml a day.
Click to expand...

Use a peristaltic pump then it does no damage to pumps, and no residue on pumps. If u run clear Kalk water not much worry about anything ending up in the tank. That being said u can also add a filter on the outlet if u r worried about residue.
 
Use a peristaltic pump then it does no damage to pumps, and no residue on pumps. If u run clear Kalk water not much worry about anything ending up in the tank. That being said u can also add a filter on the outlet if u r worried about residue.
Click to expand...

that's also the plan I have for my quarantine / frag tank - I have a kalk stirrer from Avast that's going to eventually hold my kalk - added through Avast ATO. I plumbed the outlet of the stirrer so it sits near to my re-circulation pump inlet in the sump (it's the pump that cycles the water from the sump through the chiller, UV and back into the sump through a filter sock). no more two part for me.

I may put a Ca reactor on the 320 - then again - like Tony says - Kalk and water changes may keep up just fine. Time will tell.
 
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