I have used Mrs wages for many years and have never seen any difference between it and brs kalk which is the only other one I've used. I use it and all for reef since the kalk will no longer keep up. I don't see any reason to buy more expensive " hobby grade " kalk as it seems like another way we are being overcharged for a cheap product.
I don’t think you would see a material difference between those two in terms of results in the tank. There are legitimate differences, but the real question is whether those differences matter to you, or are worth paying for.
Note: I am heavily biased in this because I sourced the
BRS one which means I inherently liked it :)
Poof: Mrs. Wages is like most kalk products: a talc-like powder that poofs when you pour or scoop it. Some of that ends up in the air, which means you may breathe it in, which isn’t ideal. It can also make it harder to clean up after.
BRS kalk is a free flowing much denser material. Downside is it does not work as well in stirrers. Only stirrers with the strongest stir bars seem to handle it well.
Quality: BRS is USP grade, which in my experience USP almost always a major step up from food grade. In this case, you can see that in the data above and the
lab results. That said, with food-grade kalk like Mrs. Wages, many of the impurities will precipitate out in the high-pH solution, so purity likely matters a lot less here than it does with many other chemicals. Personally, I would just try to avoid dosing the settled slurry at the bottom of the container, since that is where many of the precipitated impurities collect.
My Experience: I'd use any of them and I think the results would be very hard to distinguish, likely impossible. However in practice I tend to use
BRS just because I don't want to breath that poof every time I refill the container. In recent testing I also knocked a container of ESV kalk off the table and the mess was near impossible to clean, I don't think I'll ever get it all out of the carpet. I am pretty sure the free flowing
BRS would have just vacuumed out.
I do have a couple of questions for RHF.
With the more recent rise in slurry reactors, where the precipitate is dosed to the tank would those precipitated impurities stay precipitated and unavailable in the tank perpetually? What if that material settled in lower-pH areas of the tank, such as deeper within the sand bed? I am thinking more about years of cumulative effect of many pounds of material rather than an immediate issue.
I know most people don’t care about silica like we used to, but is the 2,000+ ppm silica an example of something that would not precipitate in high pH? If so, are there any other materially relevant impurities that fit that same category?
