Nightmare Chemistry!

[ckrhone]

I have just this evening tested some of my water parameters and compared them to those I took on Sunday. My Magnesium has not gone up at all from 1260 ppm even though I am giving the max dose of Mg supplement, and my calcium has dropped 10 ppm from 390 ppm yet had two full kent kalkwasser doses in 48 hours.
My tank is 4 months old now, is this unusual or just the corraline algae and corals stripping the calcium out of the water and using the mg in the process?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

It takes a huge amount of magnesium supplement to boost magnesium. Forget the label dose, which is to maintain levels.

This calculator shows how much to use:

Reef chemicals calculator
http://home.comcast.net/~jdieck1/chem_calc3.html

Folks dosing limewater usually dose it every day to meet demand.

What happened to the alkalinity? That is the way to judge limewater dosing, as it moves up and down a lot faster than calcium. 10 ppm calcium might just be noise/inaccuracy in the testing.

 

[ckrhone]

Calcium Reactor

Calcium Reactor

I guess I have done the right thing then and ordered my deltec aclcium reactor to get the calcium back up to natural levels. I guess I will be adding the kalkwasser to maintain ph during the summer and would hope that the PH will hold at 8 at least into the autumn. KH is at 10 dkH, ph at 8 at the moment, dosing kalk as we speak, may keep it dripping through the night.

Do you use or even recommend the use of ph buffers? or is kalk the best way to go?

You really must have a lot of patience with all of us guys on here!

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Using a CaCO3/CO2 reactor to boost calcium is usually not a good plan, unless it is a very small boost. To boost calcium by 40 ppm that way will boost alkalinity by 2 meq/L (5.6 dKH).

Buffers are never a suitable additive unless you want to boost alkalinity and not calcium.

You really must have a lot of patience with all of us guys on here!


:lol: