Dosing through auto water changes and ATO

[Culinarywiz]

Thinking about dosing calcium and DKH to my daily water change input via Neptune DOS. This exchanges 2 gallons per day. Quite precise.
Also thinking about adding a touch of carbon dosing to the ATO. This is not as precise, but would start very light and increase or adjust as needed.
This would eliminate the need for daily manual dosing and the addition of another auto dosing unit.
BTW, both ATO and water change reservoirs are 55 gal Brute barrels. I top them off weekly.
Anyone else doing this?
Seems like a simple way to be more efficient.
Pros and cons?

 

[Cichlid Dad]

Thinking about dosing calcium and DKH to my daily water change input via Neptune DOS. This exchanges 2 gallons per day. Quite precise.
Also thinking about adding a touch of carbon dosing to the ATO. This is not as precise, but would start very light and increase or adjust as needed.
This would eliminate the need for daily manual dosing and the addition of another auto dosing unit.
BTW, both ATO and water change reservoirs are 55 gal Brute barrels. I top them off weekly.
Anyone else doing this?
Seems like a simple way to be more efficient.
Pros and cons?

Cal and ALK don't mix.

 

[Sisterlimonpot]

You can only add so much 2 part to your salt mix before it starts to precipitate. You're better off purchasing a salt with high alk and calcium already.

It seems like you're wanting to limit the number of dosing pumps required. Or maybe just to simplify things some.

As for adding carbon to your ato, I personally don't know if that's advisable either just because evaporation rates vary and that's a recipe for future headaches.

 

[PotatoPig]

At the concentrations you need them at to dose they’ll just react and precipitate out if they’re mixed.

That said, I use this to dose Alk. Each day I put the daily consumption of Alk in the ATO reservoir and it tops off the tank about 5x a day, so the doses go in more evenly spaced to better avoid Alk swings than my manual dosing could manage. Then I just manually dose Calcium.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I expect you can put calcium into new salt water if it is not already a high alk mix.

You can put alk, of kalkwasser, into the ATO.

As folks note, don’t boost alk in new salt water.