questions for the forum

[stevestank]

I did my param tests yesterday

Temp 79
SG 1.0245
KH 9
PH 8.11
Nitrates, Phosphates, Amonia 0
Calcium 500+
Magnesium 1500+

I have two concerns:

1. When I use the salifert test kits for Calcium and Magnesium... they are off the charts. Reason is more than likely because I dose kalk and supplement with "purple up" which has magnesium an iodine in it. I don't notice any precipitation and my tank looks very good with plenty of purple, pink and green coraline. Question is: can I have too much calcium or magnesium?

2. I am setting up a kalk drip system using a Kangaroo parastalic pump and a redundant back-up system which will simply top-off. The entire kalk dose/top off system will be 15 gallons and should "automate" my tank for an entire week. Question is: does anyone else use medical grade peristalic pumps to dose kalk? What were your hurdles or success stories?

I tried to use my tsunami top off system to dose kalk from a 10 gallon tank on the floor. I tried to raise the tubing to the point where my little pump could barely trickle the kalkwasser into my sump because of head pressure. The other day, it wasn't able to... thus I moved the tubing down. I wasn't paying attention and spiked my PH to 8.33. I lost one fish. Moral of the story... don't do that.

Steve

 

[MJAnderson]

I'm not an expert (or a chemist) but I did sleep in a Holiday Inn last night so here's my take...

Elevated levels of mag retard precipitation of Calcium. At normal Mag levels 1200-1300, pushing Calcium above 500 is difficult because it would precipitate out. By having elevated levels of Mag, you are allowing the elevated levels of calcium. Levels of Mag that high can be toxic, especially to clams. One thing I don't know is if elevated levels of calcium are harmful. Your reading are outside of natural sea water norms, so that would scare me.

I drop saturated kalk through a dosing pump. Works just fine. With a medical pump you might want to turn down the speed at which you dose since I think it's topping off too quickly. You mentioned the Typhoon ATO. Is that one of the pressure activated top-offs? If so, they don't kick on until the water level has dropped 1 inch. Depending on how fast your pump pumps, you might be dumping too much kalk into the system in too short of a period of time. Turn down the rate on the pump or put it on a timer to run only a few minutes at a time every hour. I have and ACjr and so my top-off only happens at night. It helps balance my PH drop. BTW, my PH is 8.3-8.5, so I wouldn't be worried about 8.33. Mines high to fight off some algae issues and it seems to be working...

 

[stevestank]

Hey thanks Mike. Ironically, I'm pumping kalk into the tank you sold me . My problem was my Tsunami dumping 3 gallons of kalkwasser into my sump (145 gallon system capacity). It dumped because it had failed to pump over the head pressure and the level in my sump was 3 gallons low as opposed to 1.25 gallons it normally pumps. I'm looking for stability and automation. The plan is to continuously pump 1.25 gallons of kalkwasser per day using a kangaroo pump. The Tsunami will pump regular RO water for whatever evaps over 1.25 gallons per day. I read if Kalkwasser is pumped with a peristalic pump very slowly 24 hours a day, you can achieve 8.10 at night and 8.25 during light photoperiod. I figure that's stable enough at .15 PH drift. I had been drifting between 7.75 and 8.2. That's stressful to a lot of aquatic life. I figure if I can't get the stability I'm looking for, I can mod the kangaroo pump to only pump at night. Takes some soldering and tinkering though.

 

[MJAnderson]

Just an an FYI. I set up mine to only top off with kalk and just changed how saturated it needed to be to keep alk and calcium levels up. As my corraline and corals grew, 1.25g per day of fully saturated kalk doesn't meet my ALK needs and I dose as well. You might want to consider dosing only kalk and not pure RO.

 

[stealle]

I can mod the kangaroo pump to only pump at night. Takes some soldering and tinkering though.

Can you give some pics of that mod to the kangaroo pump or give a very detailed description of how it's done? I've got a Kangaroo 324 and I'd like to know how to do that mod.