Coral chemistry at work: Do you use a calcium reactor?

[Treefer32]

I probably should be running a Calcium reactor, but it's setup has been daunting and I'm actually afraid to try one. Plus I have other more important things I want to implement on my 340 gallon system plus cost is still a factor.

I spend maybe $15 per year on a near 10 lb bag of Baking Soda and then bake it in the oven to get the PH boost.

I buy calcium chloride from BRS, a 7 lb bag lasts me close to 6 months. I also dose magnesium chloride / sulfate mixture (As I don't do water changes very often).

I also dose red sea A, B, C, D trace elements and chaeto grow (20-30 ml per week of each). A 500 ml bottle of each lasts around 15 weeks - almost 4 months. $160 / around 4-6 months = $25-40 a month. Vs. a calcium reactor that runs probably $800+.

I also am dosing small amounts of kalkwasser to slowly transition from calcium / alk. IF I do that I spend even less on calcium as kalkwasser is significantly cheaper. Could be closer to the $20-$25 per month with trace elements.

It would take me around 2 years to pay for a calcium reactor plus the setup and tuning it. I just am not sure I'm that confident in my skills to get it setup properly and then tune it so it doesn't burn my corals.

I'm currently dosing 144 ml of alk and calcium per day plus 1.5 liters of kalkwasser per day. I drip kalkwasser 24/7 with a peristalic pump.

The second reason I'm not sure on a calcium reactor is with the baked baking soda and Kalkwasser dosing my ph high point is 7.9. Without those its around 7.5-7.6. If a calcium reactor lowers PH, I'd be screwed.

At this point, I might buy a step doser to increase my dosing of kalkwasser from 1.5 liters per day to 1 gallon per day. I'm struggling to keep alk up with my current regimen. Corals have really taken off though. Especially LPS stuff.

For now, my next big purchase is a megasized UV. Probably a Lifegard 120 watt. I've got all the plumbing parts for it (2 gate valves, an apex add on for flow meter and the 2 inch flow meter) just need the UV to be in stock. Also just picked up a plank auto feeder. Looking to see how that works for auto feeding freeze dried and alternative to frozen foods when I'm gone on vacation.

Then over the next year I'll decide how to expand dosing to increase my dosing capacity. I feel like I need to raise PH first. I've debated finding a way to dispense pure oxygen to the sump to drive ph up. That may be cost prohibitive. Or expand my ATS to twice the size to see if that could help drive oxygenation of the water and CO2 removal. Too many options!

 

[mangolove]

I just really dont understand how I could use one and dial it in etc. Thats why i dont use it and for now I only have a pico tank

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

The max recommended dose (25 mL per day per 100 L) is surprisingly little alk and calcium. Not sure why they set it so low, but it would not maintain many SPS tanks.

Following up on that comment, the 25 mL per 100 L adds only 1.5 dKH and 10.8 ppm calcium. Not enough for many reef tanks.

Again, I'm not sure why they set it that low, but I'd be comfortable using more than their max if I wanted to. It may be to prevent newbies from dosing too much without really keeping track of alk or calcium.

 

[vetteguy53081]

CA reactor has been a difference maker for me

 

[vahegan]

Following up on that comment, the 25 mL per 100 L adds only 1.5 dKH and 10.8 ppm calcium. Not enough for many reef tanks.

Again, I'm not sure why they set it that low, but I'd be comfortable using more than their max if I wanted to. It may be to prevent newbies from dosing too much without really keeping track of alk or calcium.

I am afraid that the main concern with adding too much AFR would be bacterial bloom. AFAIK its main constituent is calcium formiate, which adds one extra atom of carbon per each added molecule of CaCO3. At high Ca/Alk consumption, this would result in too much of organic carbon added...

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

Running a calcium reactor because it's the best mix of 'automation' and 'cost' for my large (250g total water volume) system.

Two-part dosing would be prohibitively expensive given I'd be keeping all LPS and SPS. When my ~55g system was happy I was going through ~30 mL of each solution of undiluted ATI essentials pro two-part per day; scaling that up, that's ~130 mL for my current system, or ~$80/month (which I expect would increase when SPS colonies take off). Calcium reactor was a higher up-front cost, but cheaper long-term.

Kalkwasser reactor was another option I considered, but would require more maintenance and fiddling than I was willing to do (especially if I need to leave the tank alone for a week or two when I travel). The benefits of my calcium reactor are 1) that it's purely automated once I got it dialed in (electronic CO2 regulator tied into my Apex, peristaltic dosing pump feed), and 2) I can monitor tank pH, reactor pH, and alk remotely with my Apex and shut it off if need be.

Down side is hit to pH, but I feed heavily and have a large refugium with chaeto, so that helps counteract the pH hit (and will further be counteracted when I hook up my CO2 scrubber at some point).

Interesting. I buy 8 gallons from BRS (4g cal 4g alk) for like $110 and it lasts me around 6 months with 360g. Decent amount of coral, not super massive amount of SPS, but decent amount. At less than $20/month I don't see big urgency for me to change to another system.

 

[vahegan]

I am afraid that the main concern with adding too much AFR would be bacterial bloom. AFAIK its main constituent is calcium formiate, which adds one extra atom of carbon per each added molecule of CaCO3. At high Ca/Alk consumption, this would result in too much of organic carbon added...

I have played with calcium formiate as the main Ca/Alk source many years before AFR was available on the market. At that time I was also trying to fight elevated phosphate levels, and thought that calcium formiate may be the perfect additive as it would also serve as organic carbon source - sort of, 3-in-1. However, within a few months i faced the issue of too much bacterial slime build up, to an extent that pump pipes were clogged up, blocking the circulation, requiring weekly cleaning. Eventually, I had to drop the idea. I think this is the reason they advise a very low dose, that would be suitable for slow growth systems.

 

[bureau13]

I probably should be running a Calcium reactor, but it's setup has been daunting and I'm actually afraid to try one.

I'm in a very similar position with my 240, although I have almost no corals right now...not adding until I figure out my high nitrate/low phosphate issue. The funny thing is, I actually have a CaRx, I think Korallin maybe? I bought it used in the previous incarnation of my tank, but I never set it up. It wont' fit under my tank, but I'm beginning to care less about that. Once I have more corals, I will look into setting it up I think.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I am afraid that the main concern with adding too much AFR would be bacterial bloom. AFAIK its main constituent is calcium formiate, which adds one extra atom of carbon per each added molecule of CaCO3. At high Ca/Alk consumption, this would result in too much of organic carbon added...

That's a reasonable hypothesis, and it may be true, but comments from Lou Ekus about where the bacteria reside and the effects on nutrients would make me believe that is not their concern.

There is very little energy in formate, unlike acetate (vinegar), so the chance of a bloom seems low to me.

But I do recognize that is possibly what happened in your case above.

 

[vahegan]

That's a reasonable hypothesis, and it may be true, but comments from Lou Ekus about where the bacteria reside and the effects on nutrients would make me believe that is not their concern.

There is very little energy in formate, unlike acetate (vinegar), so the chance of a bloom seems low to me.

But I do recognize that is possibly what happened in your case above.

What are the comments by Lou Ekus on where the bacteria reside, and the effect on nutrients?

I chose for my experiments formate specifically because it contained least excessive carbon and most calcium of all soluble organic calcium salts I could think of. Calcium acetate and citrate both contain already 3 excessive carbon atoms, and if we look at ascorbate or gluconate, the number of excessive carbon atoms increases to 11.

But even one excessive carbon molecule was too much (in my case at least). Coming back to the topic, the beauty of calcium reactors is that it dissolves CaCO3 without adding anything else. Сalcium formate is close to this, as an abstraction, it can be viewed as Ca(COOH)2 = CaCO3+C+H2O, but even this one excessive carbon atom may result in undesirable effects when the consumption of CaCO3 is high. With acetate/citrate, the bacterial effect must be triple of that caused by formate...

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

What are the comments by Lou Ekus on where the bacteria reside, and the effect on nutrients?

"While it is true that the calcium formate will add some very small amount of organic carbon compounds, the amount is so small, that it does almost nothing for "carbon dosing"."

DIY Tropic Marin All for Reef (One Part Dosing Solution)

Couple of folks at the meeting sounded very interested in Tropic Marin All For Reef One Part that I am currently using on my 60 Cube. Buying those remade bottles is ridiculously expensive, if you go that route you'll be spending a lot of money. However, there is a DIY Recipe you can use that...

www.reef2reef.com

"Just a small "clarification"... It is currently theorized, that much (not all) of the metabolization of the formate is done by bacteria located within the coral polyps. While other amounts happen in the substrate, coral structure and other areas within the tank system. Not to imply that the metabolization is done by the coral polyp itself."

Dosing all for reef and 0 nitrate and 0 phosphates

I'm not blaming All for reef for what's going on in my tank at all. Just trying to figure it out. I do have to say even though my nitrates are at 0 as well as my phosphates , my tank looks great , my lps are super fluffy looking and everything looks great. I am going to keep with the 2 part and...

www.reef2reef.com

"
The maximum recommended dosage is calculated from the O2 consumption with other kinds of organic carbon dosing like ethanol. From vodka dosing we know that organic carbon dosing is limited by O2 consumption and bacterial growth (blooms).

However, ethanol and formate are quite different as bacterial food. The number of bacteria metabolizing formate and the energy and growth yield from formate seems quite limited. This seems to make formate much less problematic.

Ethanol usually is dosed to tanks with lots of fish and other heterotrophs while high dosages of Carbo-Calcium or All-For-Reef are dosed to reef tanks with lots of autotrophs or semi-autotrophic corals. Autotrophic coralline algae and zooxanthellate corals compensate for at least most of the O2 consumption by bacterial formate metabolism with O2 production in the light. This makes it quite unlikely that moderately exceeding the maximum recommended dosage will cause any problems if most Carbo-Calcium is dosed in the morning.

So far no problems with bacterial blooms or O2 deficiency have been reported to us, although we have stated to several users upon request, that exceeding the maximum recommended dosage will most likely not cause any problems."

Ca and Alk in the same supplement? How does this work?

You can buy it in bulk. Look for the recipe on bulk reef supply or on this forum: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/diy-all-for-reef-recipe-from-tropic-marin-thanks-zack.659055/ Yeah I meant buy the calcium formate in larger quantities than 1400g. Surly you could buy calcium formate powder from...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

After that last quote (which is from Hans-Werner), there is more discussion of the max dose and what that means.