2 Part Dosing

[skipcurl]

I am dosing BRS Calcium Chloride and Soda ash for my Alkalinity and Calcium (1 Gallon Mix). I do the Soda ash at night an the Calcium Chloride during the day. I am finding that I need to run the dosing for the Calcium almost 3x longer that the Alkalinity dosing. I thought I read somewhere that there is a relationship on Calcium and Alkalinity consumption and BRS created the mixes so you would run both dosing pumps for the same amount of time daily. Am I losing it? I just can not keep enough Calcium in the system and the Alkalinity consumption is very little.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I created those mixes for 1:1 dosing which matches coral skeleton formation ratios.

Calcium can not it decline in its own.

Can you describe exactly what solutions you made?

do you know the pumps are delivering the same volumes per time?

 

[skipcurl]

That is what I thought. I used the 1 Gallon packets into 1 Gallon of Water. Maybe a bad batch (doubt it). I will run a 15 min test and see if they output the same.

 

[skipcurl]

Well the pumps are off by about 10% with the Alkalinity pump a little higher. But that still does explain. So you are saying that I should being dosing the same amount of time if I use those BRS 1 Gallon Packets. It never seems to be that way. I could reorder two new packets and reset my system to the correct numbers and see what happens. I am now doing about 4 minutes a day for Alkalinity and 15 minutes for Calcium. I do have a small tank (29 Gallons) and mostly LPS with 1 SPS. I would like to understand this before I move into a bigger tank. I use Red Sea Trident Method to measure and have verified my measurements with a ICP

 

[skipcurl]

Just read your 2004 article on dosing. I am also going to reset my numbers back to ideal and try this again (over a couple days) and start the dosing process over again. If that doesn't work, then I will buy new packets. I am looking to keep my Calcium at 440 and Alkalinity at 7.0 (same as my salt mix).

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

The lower the daily demand, the more likely are other things than calcification to cause the ratio to skew.

The biggest is water changes.

Others include nitrate rising or falling (or dosing), sulfur denitrators, and top off with tap water.

This has more:

When Do Calcium and Alkalinity Demand Not Exactly Balance? by Randy Holmes-Farley - Reefkeeping.com

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-12/rhf/index.htm