Does kalk really help with PH.

[doubleshot00]

Over the last few days i have been dosing more kalk (from 8pm to 8 am 250ml) than ever just to see if kalk really helps with PH. Also over the last few days I’ve opened almost every window in the house to raise the ph. It seems only fresh air helps. I do **** the windows at night though.

Also the week prior ive had the windows shut and you can see it always drops at night.

Does kalk really help? As you can see from my graph it does nothing for my tank at night. As you can see ive been struggling with PH. And no i can not run an air line outside. To much demo to get this done and i love my wife.

Windows open

week before

 

[JamesZ.]

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.

 

[JamesZ.]

That lowest point was a water change.

 

[mdb_talon]

From a quick look at your build thread you have a 90g? If so then 250ml kalk over 12 hours wont make much if any noticeable impact. That's a very small amount of kalk. In my 250g system for example I dose around 15000ml a day(around 4 gallons).

 

[14 foot reef]

I Dose 6 Gallons of super saturated Kalk every night from 10:00 pm to 2:00 pm the next day( Everyday ) through AVAST Marine K2 reactor in my 850 gallon system ( Evaporation 24 hours ) I fought PH forever (20 Years) until I did this. Recirculating CO2 scrubber on skimmer was a huge waste of money on media. Give this method time, dont open windows and increase Kalk at the same time, as you wont know whats fixing your PH issue, airing out house, or increased Kalk. Your ALK will rise higher than you want at first, but as your coral growth increases because non suppressed PH, it will decrease your ALK through consumption.
Try this for one month. I bet you are surprised by the positive results.

 

[Wiskey]

I think the issue is the amount of Kalk you are dosing. I try and make up almost all of my evaporation with Kalk, in my tank (200G system) that's 3800 ML and when I check the logs I see that my topoff turns on like every other day which is about perfect.

My PH is no issue, and I'm also running a CA reactor at 6.25 PH and 50ML/Min because when I would travel and nobody was breathing in the house my PH from Core 7 and Kalk was getting to 8.7!!

 

[14 foot reef]

@Wiskey .... I think that is the key to success. Replace all evap with saturated Kalk.

 

[KStatefan]

I Dose 6 Gallons of super saturated Kalk every night from 10:00 pm to 2:00 pm the next day( Everyday ) through AVAST Marine K2 reactor in my 850 gallon system ( Evaporation 24 hours ) I fought PH forever (20 Years) until I did this. Recirculating CO2 scrubber on skimmer was a huge waste of money on media. Give this method time, dont open windows and increase Kalk at the same time, as you wont know whats fixing your PH issue, airing out house, or increased Kalk. Your ALK will rise higher than you want at first, but as your coral growth increases because non suppressed PH, it will decrease your ALK through consumption.
Try this for one month. I bet you are surprised by the positive results.

How are you super saturating the kalk?

 

[14 foot reef]

How are you super saturating the kalk?

Mentioned above ...................
through AVAST Marine K2 reactor

 

[BroccoliFarmer]

@Wiskey .... I think that is the key to success. Replace all evap with saturated Kalk.

although i could get on board with this...my question would be then how do you maintain your alk levels? If you are targeting low to mid 8's, would this approach not make keeping your alk levels in range difficult?

 

[KStatefan]

Mentioned above ...................
through AVAST Marine K2 reactor

What are you feeding the reator with?

 

[Jekyl]

@Randy Holmes-Farley

 

[14 foot reef]

What are you feeding the reator with?

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

 

[Montiman]

What I have experienced with kalk is a positive feed back loop.

Dosing kalk causes a pH increase. The pH increase increases alk consumption which lets you add more kalk, which increases pH more, which increases alk consumption more, which lets you add more kalk, ect.

It is hard to use kalk to raise pH when your alk consumption is low because you can't add much. There are 2 things you can try to resolve this.

1. Add more corals to increase consumption and let you add more kalk.
2. Just add more kalk even if it starts to increase alk. It might trigger the feedback loop and cause the alk consumption to go up. This has worked well for me in some cases but it doesn't always work. If you try this test alk daily and be ready to turn off the kalk if it spikes too high.

 

[Wiskey]

although i could get on board with this...my question would be then how do you maintain your alk levels? If you are targeting low to mid 8's, would this approach not make keeping your alk levels in range difficult?

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

 

[Wiskey]

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'm the same way,.. I'm using a DOS. I have mine set to be pretty much even dosing all day though, it spreads the 3800 ML over the full 24 hours.

I think the important part is NEVER use your ATO. That puts in these large quantities all at once and causes PH to spike all over the place. Especially if you forget to turn it off one day while doing a water change.

Whiskey

 

[vabben]

It sounds like you need to up your saturation and amount. I add 1.5 cups to my Avast reactor every 2 weeks and Kalk replaces 90% of my evaporation by dosing 24hrs a day.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

What I have experienced with kalk is a positive feed back loop.

Dosing kalk causes a pH increase. The pH increase increases alk consumption which lets you add more kalk, which increases pH more, which increases alk consumption more, which lets you add more kalk, ect.

It is hard to use kalk to raise pH when your alk consumption is low because you can't add much. There are 2 things you can try to resolve this.

1. Add more corals to increase consumption and let you add more kalk.
2. Just add more kalk even if it starts to increase alk. It might trigger the feedback loop and cause the alk consumption to go up. This has worked well for me in some cases but it doesn't always work. If you try this test alk daily and be ready to turn off the kalk if it spikes too high.

I agree with the description. But I think that’s technically a negative feedback loop. More alk addition causes more alk demand, lessening the alk rise. You can choose to override the negative feedback loop, by adding more, but you are not forced to.

I discuss such feedback loops here;

Reef Chemistry Question of the Day #259 The Incredible Feedback Loops of Reef Chemistry

Reefkeepers are extraordinarily fortunate that there are so many strong negative feedback loops in reef chemistry, and relatively few positive feedback loops. A positive feedback loop is a situation where as a process proceeds, it alters things in a way that makes the process go faster and...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I think the important part is NEVER use your ATO. That puts in these large quantities all at once and causes PH to spike all over the place. Especially if you forget to turn it off one day while doing a water change.

Whiskey

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.

 

[14 foot reef]

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

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.