I've lost tanks to Kalkwasser, accidently dumping in too much at once. I'm a bit gunshy of going to Kalkwasser, but I tried AFR and had negative effects on my corals. Tank just didn't seem right. Corals lost color and things became drab. I went back to my normal dosing regimen. I do 3 part.
Buy and Bake Baking Soda and dose that on a doser for alk
I buy the 7 lb bags of calcium chloride from
BRS and dose that (equal parts to what I dose alk).
I buy the Magnesium Chloride 7 lb bag and Magnesium Sulfate from
BRS and dose that ) Each of these easily last me 6-7 months, maybe longer. Much cheaper on a monthly basis than AFR.
I then dose red sea trace elements and Chaeto grow weekly. My algae turf scrubber ran into issues, I determined it was depleting trace elements rapidly. So, I am now dosing Chaeto grow which contains trace elements for algae. And then Red Sea A, B, C, D trace elements (Includes Iron, Iodine, Potassium, Boron, Manganese, and others).
Since switching back to the Red Sea regimen, the corals are so much brighter in color and just look healthier than AFR.
For PH reasons, I should try pickling lime again. But, I'm gun shy after having it massacer fish and corals within a couple hours. My pump stuck on or something and fed in 3 gallons of kalkwasser to a 55 gallon display. Came home to a white cloud of death. I was able to save a couple fish, the one or two that were still alive, literally looked for the net and swam into it. They were waging their bets on a net vs. the cloud of death they were in. I had to start over after that. Ammonia went off the scale hitting over 15 a few days later.
