Does kalk really help with PH.

[BroccoliFarmer]

I'm keeping my ALK around 9 now, but I was keeping it at 8 forever. With the ALK demand I'm also using a CA reactor and 2 part to keep levels stable, it would drop to under 7 in just a few hours if I pulled the other dosing methods. The Kalk reactor/CA reactor run all day, then I have a high demand right toward the end of the day, so a little 2 part is added over those 4 hours to help even that out a little bit.

Whiskey

I think this works if your tank consumes more Kalk than the ATO can deliver then augmented by another source..but if you are less than that level, i dont see how someone could control Kalk levels by ensuring that 100% of evaporation is replaced by kalk.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I think this works if your tank consumes more Kalk than the ATO can deliver then augmented by another source..but if you are less than that level, i dont see how someone could control Kalk levels by ensuring that 100% of evaporation is replaced by kalk.

I agree to an extent, with the caveat that the negative feedback loops of higher alk and higher pH increasing consumption, helps ensure stability.

I ran my tank that way for years, but I also wasn’t concerned with maintaining a predetermined specific alk level.

 

[KStatefan]

Apex DOS head set to run from 10:00 pm to 2:00pm the next day. You can use any pump that doses, just figure out your evaporation in 24hrs and push that through Alk reactor reverse light schedule, instead of using kalk in the ATO reservoir.
Before Apex DOS, I Used a tunze pump on a timer.

Replacement Metering Pump for Tunze Osmolator 5000.02

Easily replace the low voltage metering pump for your Tunze Osmolator Universal 3155 auto top off system.

www.bulkreefsupply.com

I am not explaining my question very good.

What are you mixing with the kalk powder to allow you to get a super saturated solution?

 

[Dburr1014]

I am not explaining my question very good.

What are you mixing with the kalk powder to allow you to get a super saturated solution?

I believe vinagar helps with that.

 

[14 foot reef]

I am not explaining my question very good.

What are you mixing with the kalk powder to allow you to get a super saturated solution?

RODI Water from my 50 gallon RO drum.
I pull rodi out of 50 gallon container through the Neptune DOS that pushes the water through the Avast K2 Kalk stirrer. Kalk stirrer pushing this much water through a day keeps the reactor supersaturated. I add a couple of cups of Kalk every week. Monitoring now with PH probe in K2 Reactor, but will soon switch to conductivity probe as they are much more accurate at measuring the high ph consistently and accurately.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I am not explaining my question very good.

What are you mixing with the kalk powder to allow you to get a super saturated solution?

I think he means a slurry. No one uses a true supersaturated solution.

Vinegar can be used to increase solubility, but it’s logistically difficult to use with a kalk reactor.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

RODI Water from my 50 gallon RO drum.
I pull rodi out of 50 gallon container through the Neptune DOS that pushes the water through the Avast K2 Kalk stirrer. Kalk stirrer pushing this much water through a day keeps the reactor supersaturated. I add a couple of cups of Kalk every week. Monitoring now with PH probe in K2 Reactor, but will soon switch to conductivity probe as they are much more accurate at measuring the high ph consistently and accurately.

Just to be technically correct, what you may be making is undersaturated, saturated, or a saturated solution with suspended particles (a slurry).

A true supersaturated solution means a fully dissolved solution that has dissolved more than is possible at equilibrium. An example is warming water to dissolve more of a chemical, then cooling it back down. For the time between when the liquid cooled and the extra dissolved solid precipitated, that solution is correctly termed supersaturated.

 

[BroccoliFarmer]

I agree to an extent, with the caveat that the negative feedback loops of higher alk and higher pH increasing consumption, helps ensure stability.

I ran my tank that way for years, but I also wasn’t concerned with maintaining a predetermined specific alk level.

I am struggling for tank stability and burning tips on my SPS. all of the feedback I have been given is keep your alk in the 8s as mine was too high..i have no clue how well that works or if this makes any sense..but willing to try.

 

[14 foot reef]

I think he means a slurry. No one uses a true supersaturated solution.

Vinegar can be used to increase solubility, but it’s logistically difficult to use with a kalk reactor.

Agree with Randy, I keep the kalk reactor as saturated as possible by 24 hour stirring , & never letting it settle by pushing 6 gallons a day through the Kalk reactor. I have an advantage because my sump is in the garage 50 feet away form my reef and my total water volume is 850 gallons. So I never worry about the idea of the slurry unmixed Kalwasser powder reaching the reef tank. I would not use this method in a 100 gallon system with under tank sump without worrying about the Kalk Powder reaching the reef.
I hope this helps clear up my modified method.

 

[Wiskey]

Would have helped to know you have a ca reactor running 24/7. You are pumping CO2 into your water, of course you are going to have low PH. Try the reverse photo period Kalk dosing for a month. My alk never went above 9.7 and now with the elevated growth my alk is down to 8.6 while I also I've upped my Kalk by 3/4 of a gallon per day. The "Feedback Loop" is a real thing.
I don't run a calcium reactor, so you may have to experiment with this a little bit to get it correct.

You don't have to drink the entire pitcher of Chris's Koolaide at ACI but you can modify it as we have explained here and you probably will get your ph where you want it.

That one is me,.. not the OP. My PH is between 8.2 and 8.4 - defiantly not low, I'm also pulling outside air for my skimmer, and dose a gallon of Kalk per day.

 

[Wiskey]

I think this works if your tank consumes more Kalk than the ATO can deliver then augmented by another source..but if you are less than that level, i dont see how someone could control Kalk levels by ensuring that 100% of evaporation is replaced by kalk.

I have been doing this over 20 years, and back when I was on a shoestring budget I've killed tanks with Kalk on the ATO. I had a gravity float clog and dump in 30 gallons of Kalk all at once. I've forgotten to shut off topoff as I drain water and had a 100GPH pump dumping kalk in about as fast as it drained, luckily I was there so I saved most of it. I've had a skimmer overflow and Kalk in a topoff try and compensate,.. not helpful,...

Now I have Kalk on a dosing pump so these things won't happen. I just think it's safer, more likely to fail in the off position than the on position.

Whiskey

 

[Wiskey]

An ATO can deliver fluid as slow as you want. I set mine to deliver limewater at a rate just a bit faster than evaporation, so even in a failure of the level sensor and control, it hardly dosed any extra.

That helps for sure,.. I use a parasitotic pump on my ATO so it would take a very long time to overflow. I still don't trust my Kalk to it though.

I was using that BRS 50ml/day pump, but the gearbox completely stripped out. The gears just wore down to nothing.

Whiskey

 

[14 foot reef]

That one is me,.. not the OP. My PH is between 8.2 and 8.4 - defiantly not low, I'm also pulling outside air for my skimmer, and dose a gallon of Kalk per day.

@Wiskey ........ I wander if you played with reverse photo period Kalk dosing if you could flatten out your PH and peg it at 8.25 or possibly 8.3 24/7 after a little adjusting.
Just a thought. But if its not broke don't fix it.

 

[BroccoliFarmer]

I have been doing this over 20 years, and back when I was on a shoestring budget I've killed tanks with Kalk on the ATO. I had a gravity float clog and dump in 30 gallons of Kalk all at once. I've forgotten to shut off topoff as I drain water and had a 100GPH pump dumping kalk in about as fast as it drained, luckily I was there so I saved most of it. I've had a skimmer overflow and Kalk in a topoff try and compensate,.. not helpful,...

Now I have Kalk on a dosing pump so these things won't happen. I just think it's safer, more likely to fail in the off position than the on position.

Whiskey

Yeah..i have my kalk on a dosing pump as well...just independent to my auto top off pump. I was contemplating did i want to run my ATO through my kalk stirrer and repurpose my peristaltic pump for other stuff but am probably going to stick with my current set up. I would love to have my alk levels a little more constant..but i figure if I can keep it within a reasonable band with my current method, I should be good to go. As of now, my kalk gets added slowly regardless of evaporation and the ATO kicks in the rest.

 

[Wiskey]

@Wiskey ........ I wander if you played with reverse photo period Kalk dosing if you could flatten out your PH and peg it at 8.25 or possibly 8.3 24/7 after a little adjusting.
Just a thought. But if its not broke don't fix it.

You know? I thought about this,.. but here's my ALK:

I'm purposely raising it to 9 from around 8.5 over the last week. Every day at midnight I have way lower ALK, the corals are just using allot more right then. I'm even dosing 2 part at that time to try and offset the effect. If I was dosing Kalk only at night I would expect this affect to be much worse than it is now.

After thinking about it for a while I decided that the ocean's PH goes up and down so I'm not going to mess with it. I might come back to this one day though.

Whiskey

 

[Semisonyx]

My opinion is ditch the carx. It’s too easy to dose 2 or 3 part nowadays with dosers being so accurate. I’m like you and can’t get an outside airline, but found that shutting the skimmer off most of the day so that it isn’t constantly drawing in CO2 from the room was the catalyst for raising the pH with Randy’s Sodium Hydroxide alk formula. I was at 7.8-8.1 but now 8.3-8.5

 

[Wiskey]

My opinion is ditch the carx. It’s too easy to dose 2 or 3 part nowadays with dosers being so accurate. I’m like you and can’t get an outside airline, but found that shutting the skimmer off most of the day so that it isn’t constantly drawing in CO2 from the room was the catalyst for raising the pH with Randy’s Sodium Hydroxide alk formula. I was at 7.8-8.1 but now 8.3-8.5

That's the thing, I was dosing 300+ ML of 2 part per day, and that makes 600ML + of the TM Part C. Not only did this cause a crazy Salinity Rise but my 2000 ML DOS containers didn't last nearly long enough. Plus I was spending way over 2K per year on 2 part, more when I was doing Core 7, and that number kept going up,.. The ROI for the Capital investment of a CA reactor comes pretty fast at that rate.

The funny thing was that adding Kalk raised the PH so much that it actually caused me to increase my 2 part once the corals settled into the new PH level and kicked their growth into high gear.

When the tank was young, and demand was low 2 part was by far the best solution. Now I use all three.

CARX at 6.25-6.3 PH drip rate of 50ML on Kamoer pump. Effluent at 25 DKH
Kalk - Ice Cap reactor, stir 4 times per day, dose 3800 ML throughout the day evenly
4 Part - BRS/Tropic Marine hybrid with A and K trace and Part C - about 20 ML per day now, 40 on C.

I could do away with 2 part and just dose trace, but I keep it online because it's a quick and easy way to make adjustments, or to make up for something going wrong if I'm traveling so that I can get by until I return.

Whiskey

 

[Semisonyx]

That's the thing, I was dosing 300+ ML of 2 part per day, and that makes 600ML + of the TM Part C. Not only did this cause a crazy Salinity Rise but my 2000 ML DOS containers didn't last nearly long enough. Plus I was spending way over 2K per year on 2 part, more when I was doing Core 7, and that number kept going up,.. The ROI for the Capital investment of a CA reactor comes pretty fast at that rate.

The funny thing was that adding Kalk raised the PH so much that it actually caused me to increase my 2 part once the corals settled into the new PH level and kicked their growth into high gear.

When the tank was young, and demand was low 2 part was by far the best solution. Now I use all three.

CARX at 6.25-6.3 PH drip rate of 50ML on Kamoer pump. Effluent at 25 DKH
Kalk - Ice Cap reactor, stir 4 times per day, dose 3800 ML throughout the day evenly
4 Part - BRS/Tropic Marine hybrid with A and K trace and Part C - about 20 ML per day now, 40 on C.

I could do away with 2 part and just dose trace, but I keep it online because it's a quick and easy way to make adjustments, or to make up for something going wrong if I'm traveling so that I can get by until I return.

Whiskey

That’s a lot of 2 part! You could split the difference and try the homemade recipes like Randy’s. $10 in baking soda goes a long way.

 

[Keko21]

It will help maintain ph. The battle is getting ph up. I have had the best results using an IceCap Co2 reactor, set up as a closed loop system with my protein skimmer. Here is where my ph sits now.

Just bough a small ice cap yesterday and plan on doing the same- 1. do you find the media lasting longer with the closed loop? 2. Do you still need to put the rodi water in the bottom if you are running this way?

 

[amoore311]

Kalk absolutely has a drastic affect on PH. I can tell within 45-60 minutes of my kalk doser not working properly strictly from the PH Graph on my Apex.

My 220 uses about 2.25 Gallons of Kalk Daily. That is good for about 0.35-0.4PH points on my system. Kalk completely takes are of my SPS systems mineral demand. I am getting to the point of the kalk being maxed out though.

A Little Cost Analysis:

I use 2.25 Gallons of Kalk Solution Daily
I pay $70 for 5000 Grams of High Purity Kalk (Reef BluePrint)
I use 6 Grams/Gallon for Max Saturation Kalk Solution.

This equates to roughly $0.19/Day, or $68.95/YEAR.