Kalkwasser Question

Cscultho · Nov 12, 2023

Guys/Gals -

I have 32g biocube with a light coral load. Couple sps and softies. I want to help boost the growth of my sps’s. Currently, I do weekly water changes and only dose 5ml daily All for Reef.

-Alk sits around 8.5
-Cal sits around 400
-pH is unknown right now but a test kit is on the way

Question: can I MANUALLY dose Kalk every morning before lights on and achieve growth?

Eventually I plan to get a dosing pump but right now it’s not in the budget.

I have a new bottle of Seschme Kalkwasser and not sure what to do?

Thanks for the expert advise and guidance.

Midrats · Nov 12, 2023

Get yourself a dripper to add it slowly.

fish farmer · Nov 12, 2023

Yes you could manually dose daily. Do you add top off water? If you figure out your evaporation rate, you could design a simple drip system to add kalk.

Randy Holmes-Farley · Nov 12, 2023

If you do manual once a day dosing, the dose needs to be quite small or pH will spike too much.

I would not dose more than 0.2 dKH worth at once.

Cscultho · Nov 12, 2023

Randy Holmes-Farley said:
If you do manual once a day dosing, the dose needs to be quite small or pH will spike too much.

I would not dose more than 0.2 dKH worth at once.

How do I go about calculating this small of a dose? Would that be something like a 1/4 teaspoon or something on that order? I do not want to kill any of my tank mates in the process. Thanks

Cscultho · Nov 12, 2023

Randy Holmes-Farley said:
If you do manual once a day dosing, the dose needs to be quite small or pH will spike too much.

I would not dose more than 0.2 dKH worth at once.

I have an ATO coming tomorrow.

Randy Holmes-Farley · Nov 12, 2023

Dissolve 2 level teaspoons in a gallon of ro/di and use this calculator and the entry for saturated limewater:

http://reef.diesyst.com/chemcalc/chem_calc3.html

Cscultho · Nov 12, 2023

Randy Holmes-Farley said:
Dissolve 2 level teaspoons in a gallon of ro/di and use this calculator and the entry for saturated limewater:

http://reef.diesyst.com/chemcalc/chem_calc3.html

Thanks Randy. So if I understand your recommendation to not exceed 0.02 if manually dosing, is my calculation correct? Add just under 1-cup of mixed Kalk?