Dosing saturated kalk solution

[Rybren]

I currently add kalk to my ATO (and have been doing so for the past 12 years) It's effective and cheap; however, because my evaporation rate changes dramatically with the season, (anywhere from 1/2G to 1 1/2G daily) it is tough to provide a consistent dose to the tank.

At this time of year, I am adding 1 tsp of kalk per gallon of ATO and the evaporation rate is 1 to 1 1/2G per day. This maintains a level of 8 dkH and 480 Ca.

I'm thinking of switching to dosing kalk separately from the ATO and am trying to figure out how much of a saturated Kalk solution would be required to provide the same levels? I realize that it would be a bit of a trial and error, but am looking for a starting point to see if it would be worthwhile as I only have room for a 2 or 3 gallon container in the stand.

My pea brain tells me that I would need roughly 1/2G of saturated kalk daily, but for some reason, that seems somewhat high to me.

Thoughts?

 

[FlyPenFly]

.5g of saturated Kalk water sounds super high to me?

I plan to start supplementing my 3 part AquaForest dosing with some Kalk to bring pH up. My plan is to create shaken up saturated kalkwasser water in a separate jug. Let it settle out for a day or two, then slowly carefully pour the solution into a dedicated dosing container. This will help minimize the amount of settlement.

I'm planning to start at 60ml/day and then slowly increase it over time while decreasing my Ca/Alk dosing but maintaining my Mg dosing.

 

[Rybren]

Yeah, it seems high to me as well. But, my ATO is dumping in a gallon or so a day of 1/2 saturated kalkwasser, so for fully saturated kalkwasser, 0.5G daily might be close.

 

[Rybren]

@Randy Holmes-Farley thoughts?

 

[nereefpat]

My pea brain tells me that I would need roughly 1/2G of saturated kalk daily, but for some reason, that seems somewhat high to me.

Thoughts?

I agree with your pea brain. You are going from dosing a gallon of 1/2 saturated kalk to dosing a 1/2 gallon of saturated kalk.

It's a good place to start. Test daily if you're concerned.

FYI, 1/2 gallon of saturated kalk will raise the dKH of 120 gallons 0.5 points. Hope that helps.

 

[Rybren]

Thanks for the confirmation.
I'm not sure that it will be worth my while switching, just because I don't have space for a large enough container and I don't want to have to refill it every few days.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I currently add kalk to my ATO (and have been doing so for the past 12 years) It's effective and cheap; however, because my evaporation rate changes dramatically with the season, (anywhere from 1/2G to 1 1/2G daily) it is tough to provide a consistent dose to the tank.

At this time of year, I am adding 1 tsp of kalk per gallon of ATO and the evaporation rate is 1 to 1 1/2G per day. This maintains a level of 8 dkH and 480 Ca.

I'm thinking of switching to dosing kalk separately from the ATO and am trying to figure out how much of a saturated Kalk solution would be required to provide the same levels? I realize that it would be a bit of a trial and error, but am looking for a starting point to see if it would be worthwhile as I only have room for a 2 or 3 gallon container in the stand.

My pea brain tells me that I would need roughly 1/2G of saturated kalk daily, but for some reason, that seems somewhat high to me.

Thoughts?

the calculator linked in the stickies shows what different amounts will do for different tank water volumes.

 

[Vleis]

Hi BUD..

This should help you out.

Kalk Contribution Calculator

Aquarium calculator; Estimate the contribution of a kalk solution towards the calcium and alkalinity of a system.

www.hamzasreef.com

If you can, try to get a kalk stirrer, it would just be WAY MORE STABLE since evaporation differs sometimes...

Good luck

 

[Sabellafella]

I currently add kalk to my ATO (and have been doing so for the past 12 years) It's effective and cheap; however, because my evaporation rate changes dramatically with the season, (anywhere from 1/2G to 1 1/2G daily) it is tough to provide a consistent dose to the tank.

At this time of year, I am adding 1 tsp of kalk per gallon of ATO and the evaporation rate is 1 to 1 1/2G per day. This maintains a level of 8 dkH and 480 Ca.

I'm thinking of switching to dosing kalk separately from the ATO and am trying to figure out how much of a saturated Kalk solution would be required to provide the same levels? I realize that it would be a bit of a trial and error, but am looking for a starting point to see if it would be worthwhile as I only have room for a 2 or 3 gallon container in the stand.

My pea brain tells me that I would need roughly 1/2G of saturated kalk daily, but for some reason, that seems somewhat high to me.

Thoughts?

I would start at 1500 to 2000ml daily of fully saturated kalk.

I know in my tank after ballparking some math, fully saturated kalk per 100 gallon dosing 300 ml per day, raises my alk .1 dkh. Usually that's the rule I go by when explaining to people that you can somewhat base your kalk dose by test results.

 

[dankaqua]

Sorry to barge into this posting, but I wasn't able to PM Randy...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To Randy:

I ran across a page which linked to your 2006 and 2007 reef chemistry quizzes.

Reef Chemistry Quiz 2007

https://web.archive.org/web/20070207082844/http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2007-01/rhf/index.php

Reef Chemistry Quiz 2006

https://web.archive.org/web/20060215194440/http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-01/rhf/index.php

That sounded like a lot of fun, so I started with the 2006 page. An hour and 3 breaks later, I was done and excited to see (how badly) I did!

(...truthfully, I wanted to see the correct answers because I was there to learn something!)

And, after submit, the original page just... reloaded! No score, no answers!

I'm thinking all the material on that page is just as relevant now as ever... not like it's out of date...

Looking at the URL, it seems the page is a scrape of the original site... nice that the questions are still there, but better to have the answers too!

Do you happen to know somewhere the answers are available?

The links were found here:

Randy's Reef Chemistry Articles

While there are many good articles out there on reef chemistry topics, here's a list of my articles. Some of them need updating, and we'll be posting revisions at R2R, but there are not many things which I think are incorrect. Handy Calculators (I don't claim to have written these, but they...

www.reef2reef.com

Thanks again, and sorry for barging in!

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Sorry to barge into this posting, but I wasn't able to PM Randy...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To Randy:

I ran across a page which linked to your 2006 and 2007 reef chemistry quizzes.

Reef Chemistry Quiz 2007

https://web.archive.org/web/20070207082844/http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2007-01/rhf/index.php

Reef Chemistry Quiz 2006

https://web.archive.org/web/20060215194440/http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-01/rhf/index.php

That sounded like a lot of fun, so I started with the 2006 page. An hour and 3 breaks later, I was done and excited to see (how badly) I did!

(...truthfully, I wanted to see the correct answers because I was there to learn something!)

And, after submit, the original page just... reloaded! No score, no answers!

I'm thinking all the material on that page is just as relevant now as ever... not like it's out of date...

Looking at the URL, it seems the page is a scrape of the original site... nice that the questions are still there, but better to have the answers too!

Do you happen to know somewhere the answers are available?

The links were found here:

Randy's Reef Chemistry Articles

While there are many good articles out there on reef chemistry topics, here's a list of my articles. Some of them need updating, and we'll be posting revisions at R2R, but there are not many things which I think are incorrect. Handy Calculators (I don't claim to have written these, but they...

www.reef2reef.com

Thanks again, and sorry for barging in!

Sorry, I don’t know how to get to the answers since the original question web site is gone.

 

[dankaqua]

Any chance there is an old Word file or other document that has the q&a and would you be interested in re-inflating the quiz? I thought it might be fun in a 10 question format. I could rebuild the quiz software in a day or two.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Any chance there is an old Word file or other document that has the q&a and would you be interested in re-inflating the quiz? I thought it might be fun in a 10 question format. I could rebuild the quiz software in a day or two.

I may be able to check around tomorrow. I’ll post back if I find it.