Pickling Lime

[shesacharmer]

I have a JBJ ATO with a small pump in a five gallon pail to maintain my salinity and I go through about 3 gallons of freshwater a week in my 75 gallon tank. Can I just add pickling lime to the ATO bucket to maintain alk and calcium? My corals are mostly still small but I have alot of them (~70) and they are beginning to get ahead of what I can maintain with water changes.

Also any ideas why my tank uses more Mag than either Alk or Calcium? I generally have to dose Mag weekly to keep it at 1300.

 

[cloak]

Check this out.

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-01/rhf/index.php

HTH.

 

[Sk8r]

start with 1 tsp Mrs Wages Pickling Lime per gallon in your topoff water (lid it or cover it to prevent a 'skin' forming) up to 2 tsp per gallon.
If you hit the params in my sig line with kalk in the ato, your alk-cal-mg should stay stable until the mg runs out.
If you dose mg before the mg runs out and keep the water level up in your ato, you can keep that stability going indefinitely. I do a total reset of params only every few months.