Favorite calcium additive?

AllieBdot · Sep 13, 2020

Hi all! I've been fighting to raise my calcium (320ppm) I bought Aquavitro calcification and dose twice per week as instructed. Problem is, it only brings it up to about 360ppm and by the time it's time to dose again it's back down to 320 ppm. I'm not making any grounds. Anybody have a favorite product or any tricks to raise it? Can I dose daily? Also worth noting that my alkalinity is fine (naturally swings between 8.6 and 9.6) and the calcium doesn't seem to have any affect on it.

blasterman · Sep 14, 2020

if you don't have a lot of calcium uptake and don't do huge water changes i like Seachem Advantage calcium. Basically because it has magnesium in it. So, you kill two birds with one stone and dont have to bother testing mag very much or worrying about it. There are other calcium chloride additives with magnesium, but the Seachem is the most common. Im just lazy.

The Seachem gets kind of expensive if you go through a lot of calcium, but thats a wallet issue and not a technical one.

If you do a lot of water changes and/or want to track magnesium on its own literally any food grade calcium chloride does the trick.

stanlalee · Sep 14, 2020

If your going to use Seachem/Aquavitro use reef complete or advantage (powdered form of reef complete). It's more concentrated than what you are using, cheaper and more ideal (calcium chloride vs calcium gluconate). As mentioned it also has magnesium and strontium in proper ratios to calcium. Also ignore the 2x weekly instructions. They put that on nearly all their products. Use the "advanced" instructions. For example for reef complete the instructions say each 5ml per 20gallons will raise calcium by 10. So if your at 360 and you have 40g volume you would need to dose 40ml to raise calcium to 400. If that tank is dropping from 400 to 360 in one weeks time you need to dose approx 5.7ml daily (40ml per week) to maintain 400.

AllieBdot · Sep 14, 2020

blasterman said:
if you don't have a lot of calcium uptake and don't do huge water changes i like Seachem Advantage calcium. Basically because it has magnesium in it. So, you kill two birds with one stone and dont have to bother testing mag very much or worrying about it. There are other calcium chloride additives with magnesium, but the Seachem is the most common. Im just lazy.

The Seachem gets kind of expensive if you go through a lot of calcium, but thats a wallet issue and not a technical one.

If you do a lot of water changes and/or want to track magnesium on its own literally any food grade calcium chloride does the trick.

Thanks! We do routine water changes maybe 10% and a top off. Not going to lie, we use tap water with chlorine remover. We live in Cleveland and have hard water so the calcium and magnesium in the tap water was like a mineral dose in every water change and we were able to keep phosphates low. As we started to add more stoney coral and coraline growth took off, we need to reassess.

We joked about tossing a handful of calcium carbonate TUMS in there didn't realize we can just toss some calcium chloride ice melt in there instead

AllieBdot · Sep 14, 2020

stanlalee said:
If your going to use Seachem/Aquavitro use reef complete or advantage (powdered form of reef complete). It's more concentrated than what you are using, cheaper and more ideal (calcium chloride vs calcium gluconate). As mentioned it also has magnesium and strontium in proper ratios to calcium. Also ignore the 2x weekly instructions. They put that on nearly all their products. Use the "advanced" instructions. For example for reef complete the instructions say each 5ml per 20gallons will raise calcium by 10. So if your at 360 and you have 40g volume you would need to dose 40ml to raise calcium to 400. If that tank is dropping from 400 to 360 in one weeks time you need to dose approx 5.7ml daily (40ml per week) to maintain 400.

Interesting. So I can use enough in one dose to raise it by 100ppm without negative consequences? And then continue to dose as needed from there? I have. 110g tank so I'm a bit gun-shy about adding nearly 100ml to get it up to par

Randy Holmes-Farley · Sep 14, 2020

Brand is really unimportant. Any calcium chloride product of suitable purity is fine.

By all means, avoid Seachem Reef Calcium for calcium boosting. It is not calcium chloride, and adds a variable amount of alkalinity (from breakdown of the polygluconate) along with the calcium, making it unsuitable for boosting calcium.