New to Two Part! Questions

[cabrego]

Hi all,

I am new to dosing two part and I am looking to dose via Randy's two part recipe?

What is \recommended and available on the shelf at a local home depots / lowes etc.?

There seems to be some questions about what is safe with respect to calcium chloride. Just wondering what everyone is using, I would hate to buy something that I find out is incorrect.

I am currently dosing saturated kalk do I still need to dose sodium bicarbonate?

 

[bertoni]

I bought a 50 lb bag of Dow Flake a long time ago, and use baking soda off the shelf. There are a number of online calcium chloride sources that seem to be good quality, or you can try to find something locally. I'd spring for the online products, personally, but I'm the cautious sort.

If you need to dose the calcium part, you almost certainly will need to dose the sodium bicarbonate. Corals and coralline consume alkalinity and calcium in a nearly constant ratio, so dosing tends to be balanced at that rate: 1 meq/L to 20 ppm calcium.

 

[cabrego]

I bought a 50 lb bag of Dow Flake a long time ago, and use baking soda off the shelf. There are a number of online calcium chloride sources that seem to be good quality, or you can try to find something locally. I'd spring for the online products, personally, but I'm the cautious sort.

If you need to dose the calcium part, you almost certainly will need to dose the sodium bicarbonate. Corals and coralline consume alkalinity and calcium in a nearly constant ratio, so dosing tends to be balanced at that rate: 1 meq/L to 20 ppm calcium.

Thanks for the tip, I am dosing Kalkwasser though, doesn't that take care of the alk part of the equation?

 

[bertoni]

Kalk adds both calcium and alkalinity in the appropriate, so if the tank's levels are fine, there's no need for a two-part. Usually, if one parameter is dropping, though, the other will, as well.