Kalkwasser – Feeding Your Tank What It Desires

Jayboogy510

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If you do utilize your ato to dose kalk is it necessary to clean each time you add ro/kalk mix to the resevoir?
 

dougers31

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So I want to ease into dosing kalk, would using 1 tsp instead of 2 be an issue? What kinds of pros and cons could there be... would it be harder to overdose and in effect safer to go with 1 tsp per gallon???
 

BiG-D

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Could you use kalkwasser and a calcium reactor together? Because as of now my reactor has been able to keep alk and cal stable but I also heard if you also dose kalk its even better for your corals. So I want to use my cal reactor and kalk reactor together to see if my corals grow better or am I just going to waste money on the kalk reactor? And thank you for putting this information on the fourms.
 

FaviaFreak

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Great write up!
to me personally kalk was the magic bullet that got my corals growing fast..I always preach the benefits of kalk
 

OhYeah

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What made you buy the PM reactor? Do you see a benefit to buy a pump reactor compared to a stirrer?
 

kuyatwo

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What made you buy the PM reactor? Do you see a benefit to buy a pump reactor compared to a stirrer?

Stirrer are better than pump in my opinion as over time the Kalk eats away at the pump and either pump impeller or seals needs to be replaced.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

shred5

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btkrausen I have to say very nice and well thought out post.

One thing I would like to add is kalk is not for people who have tanks that already run at a high ph. Also kalk can be hard to add to smaller tanks because it can push the ph up rather fast and also the evaporation rate can be to slow on smaller tanks to keep up with demand.

Kalk is used to maintain both calcium and alkalinity. It really is not used to raise them, they should be raised some other way first.

Also once again great post and very well done.

Dave Polzin
 

shred5

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Stirrer are better than pump in my opinion as over time the Kalk eats away at the pump and either pump impeller or seals needs to be replaced.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I agree. tunze used to have a a reactor that was pretty neet where the pump sat in the fresh water and used jets to stir up the kalk. But yes a stirrer is the best way.

Dave Polzin
 

CJO

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So I want to ease into dosing kalk, would using 1 tsp instead of 2 be an issue? What kinds of pros and cons could there be... would it be harder to overdose and in effect safer to go with 1 tsp per gallon???

Sure. With what's in my tank, I use 2 tsp in 5 gallons.

Could you use kalkwasser and a calcium reactor together? Because as of now my reactor has been able to keep alk and cal stable but I also heard if you also dose kalk its even better for your corals. So I want to use my cal reactor and kalk reactor together to see if my corals grow better or am I just going to waste money on the kalk reactor? And thank you for putting this information on the fourms.

They are a perfect compliment to each other.

CJ
 

M@!

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Is this the right stuff? I thought Hydrated Lime was Calcium Hydroxide but this list ingredients as both?

photo10.jpg
 
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btkrausen

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Sorry, looks like I missed quite a few questions in here.


What made you buy the PM reactor? Do you see a benefit to buy a pump reactor compared to a stirrer?

When I bought the PM reactor, I bought it merely with cost in mind as it was cheaper than the Geo and had all the same features.

Edit: To clarify, the PM reactor is rock solid and would recommend to anybody looking for a larger reactor. Only thing I changed was to use 90 degree John Guest fittings instead of the straight ones, which made connecting RO easier and cleaner looking.


I think the pump would mix better than a stirrer, but then again, I've never owned a stirred. Back in the day the stirrer motors would burn out and were hard/expensive to replace. With a pump, you can buy the Maxijet and easily replace it.



Stirrer are better than pump in my opinion as over time the Kalk eats away at the pump and either pump impeller or seals needs to be replaced.

Only bad/unpure kalk eats away at your pump. I used to use Kent kalkwasser with my Geo reactor and I would have to replace the impeller constantly. However, with the PM (both use a Maxijet as the pump) I ran it for over a year and never touched the impeller. In fact, the same impeller exists today in the reactor as when I bought it. The difference is that with the PM I always used kalkwasser from BulkReefSupply, which is known to be very pure.
 
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btkrausen

btkrausen

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How often do you dose Kalk?

I don't have my reactor setup now, but when I did it dosed for 20 seconds every 9 minutes. I figured by doing it a little bit at a time it kept it from raising the pH at all, and kept a steady level of calcium in the tank, instead of fluctuations with depletion and a larger single dose to make up for it.
 

Reef Pets

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I started using a CoralVue Kalk Stirrer on my system a little over a month ago and think its the best decision ever. My favorite coral is SPS and about two weeks of using B-Ionic Kalk its like my SPS are on steroids. Ill never not use a Kalk Stirrer... Its simple to use, a stirrer is cheap to purchase and Kalk is much cheaper than 2 part and in my opinion works 10 times better.

I have mine set up on a gravity fed top off and constantly drip into the sump.
 

CUNAReefer

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I have a BRS 50ml per minute dosing pump hooked up to a Avast Marine Works kalk stirrer. I have the pump kick on for 4 minutes every 40 minutes. Maintains my Ph at 8.42. I have used a GEO Calcium Reactor, but removed as Calcium Reactors raise your alk. Because I run a ZEOVit tank, I only use Kalk as a high alk can cause tissue recession in ZEO tanks.
 

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