HuduVudu
2500 Club Member
Ok, how I arrived at this crazy simple stupid idea was kinda like this:
It started a long time ago when wet dry filters were still dominant and only the cool kids built Berlins. I had gotten back into the hobby after being in the Philippines and I was absolutetly enamored with live coral, I have to make that distinction since back then dead coral tanks were still popular. I tried dosing B-Iionic that was an abysmal failure, and to be fair I had no I idea what I was doing and the thought of reading the directions was lost on me. So then I decided to go all out I was a big software engineer during the dot com, money yah no problem. I bought a Knopp reactor. What an absolute pain it was. Needless to say I was single handedly destroying the worlds reefs, and I didn't like that. I came upon this idea about a dead spot underneath the gravel that would povide the minerals that I needed just like a calcium reactor only biological. There was hardly any information on this Jaubart system, but I persisted. I have run this system for many many years and it has provided stable systems but never really gave me what I really wanted from it ... calcium and alkalinity.
Fast forward many years, and I finally decided that the in tank plenum wasn't going to give me what I wanted and I decided that I was going to go straight to ludicrus speed. To this end I pulled the plenum out of the tank and started dripping water through it and then back into the tank. Kind of like a sump that was solely a plenum. This gave me a little bit more Ca/Alk, but I want a full tank of fast growing corals, so this idea needed an upgrade. To this end I stopped thinking in terms of Jaubart and started moving toward anaerobic digester. This was a big departure and I learned quickly that it needed to be fed, so I did this. I was testing Ca/Alk on the output and I was shocked to find that though the Ca wasn't really that much, the Alk however was crazy high. If I was feeding heavy (I fed beef and chicken) I could see around 60dKH at the output. This inspired me, but alas it was mostly bicarbonate and went away quickly. Also with a minimal Ca input the Ca didn't stay up. Seeking to capitalize in the high bicarbonate output I sought to bind the bicarbonate with Kalk (straight powder into the saltwater) this worked very well. I started using this and by adding more fast growing corals I created a serious enough load to ensure that I wasn't just fooling myself about what was being done. What I found with the anaerobic digester output though is that I was unable to automate it. The effluent from the digester when mixed with the Kalk created this, for lack of a better word, snot like substance that would do crazy things. I was left with having to manually make what I needed. The other downside of the digester is that I could only move a pre-determined amount of water through the digester at a time. If I moved to fast I didn't get the bicarbonate I needed. Clearly because the breakdown wasn't complete. This problem caused me to lose some of my fast growing frags and that made me mad. So I implemented Plan B. This was something that I had been thinking about as I worked out the problems with the digester.
Plan B the Theory:
If bicarbonate allows me to dose large amounts of Kalk then why wouldn't carbonic acid. So, carbonate saltwater and then stuff Kalk in it until I get a PH around 8.3.
Plan B the Implmentation:
I bought the plug in version of the Soda Stream. I got this model because it seems to let me use less CO2. I am not sure of this but the amount I currently use (the one drop button) seems to be still a little too much but I have worked around it. Once I got everything set up I pulled the .89quarts (~900ml) from the tank and put it in the bottle. I then hit the button and boom, carbonated salt water. I poured approx. half of the bottle (~450ml) into my liter beaker and then filled the rest with more salt water from the tank. I then add ~11/16 tsp of Kalk to the solution. This brings the solution to approx. 8-8.15 ph (I am using the Salifert ph test so my numbers aren't very precise). I let this sit for about half an hour so that the precipitate can mostly come out solution. I decant the solution and then dose the decanted solution into my aquarium. You can dump this in and it will make things a bit cloudy but you won't get the storm that come with doing this with straight Kalk and no CO2. I don't recomend doing this though the dosing ensures that your water stays crystal clear.
The aftermath:
I thought about some of the things that were happening and I have ideas as to why they may be happening. First the amount of percipitate seems pretty large. I am pretty sure that this percipitate forms as a reaction with the disolved CO2 gas in the water. At first I thought the percipitate was unused Kalk. I tested this theory with HCL (muratic acid) and since I saw bubbles coming from the percipitate my assumption is that the percipitate is indeed calcium carbonate. With this idea in mind I decided to go poor mans calcium reactor and poured the percipitate with fresh salt water into the soda stream bottle and then I carbonated the whole thing. That did it. I was then able to use what came out of the bottle to once again add more Kalk and this time I was able to get nearly the same results with half of the Kalk.
I am still working out automation and delving into the nooks and crannies as my intuition takes me. I hope to be able to fully automate the process as time goes on. I am fully aware that using this might be stupid and why not just use a calcium reactor. For me this method provides some real advantages of a calcium reactor (and dosing for that matter). The first is the amount. If you just have some low consumers or you are fish only this is great because you don't need to deal with messy kalkwasser drips and you don't have to worry about dosing one part only of a two part. The Kalk only adds Ca/Alk (and the other minerals if you use Brightwell Kalk+2). No sodium is added and no chloride is added. Also an a very small tank calcium reactors don't really make a lot of sense this gives you all of the advantages of the calcium reactor without the overhead. And the final and most important piece in my mind is that the ph of the Kalk can be adjusted. You can push the ph to 8.3. This means you don't depress the ph in your display.
As I figure out more I will post here. Hope this might help give some more options, in the on going problem of mineralization.
It started a long time ago when wet dry filters were still dominant and only the cool kids built Berlins. I had gotten back into the hobby after being in the Philippines and I was absolutetly enamored with live coral, I have to make that distinction since back then dead coral tanks were still popular. I tried dosing B-Iionic that was an abysmal failure, and to be fair I had no I idea what I was doing and the thought of reading the directions was lost on me. So then I decided to go all out I was a big software engineer during the dot com, money yah no problem. I bought a Knopp reactor. What an absolute pain it was. Needless to say I was single handedly destroying the worlds reefs, and I didn't like that. I came upon this idea about a dead spot underneath the gravel that would povide the minerals that I needed just like a calcium reactor only biological. There was hardly any information on this Jaubart system, but I persisted. I have run this system for many many years and it has provided stable systems but never really gave me what I really wanted from it ... calcium and alkalinity.
Fast forward many years, and I finally decided that the in tank plenum wasn't going to give me what I wanted and I decided that I was going to go straight to ludicrus speed. To this end I pulled the plenum out of the tank and started dripping water through it and then back into the tank. Kind of like a sump that was solely a plenum. This gave me a little bit more Ca/Alk, but I want a full tank of fast growing corals, so this idea needed an upgrade. To this end I stopped thinking in terms of Jaubart and started moving toward anaerobic digester. This was a big departure and I learned quickly that it needed to be fed, so I did this. I was testing Ca/Alk on the output and I was shocked to find that though the Ca wasn't really that much, the Alk however was crazy high. If I was feeding heavy (I fed beef and chicken) I could see around 60dKH at the output. This inspired me, but alas it was mostly bicarbonate and went away quickly. Also with a minimal Ca input the Ca didn't stay up. Seeking to capitalize in the high bicarbonate output I sought to bind the bicarbonate with Kalk (straight powder into the saltwater) this worked very well. I started using this and by adding more fast growing corals I created a serious enough load to ensure that I wasn't just fooling myself about what was being done. What I found with the anaerobic digester output though is that I was unable to automate it. The effluent from the digester when mixed with the Kalk created this, for lack of a better word, snot like substance that would do crazy things. I was left with having to manually make what I needed. The other downside of the digester is that I could only move a pre-determined amount of water through the digester at a time. If I moved to fast I didn't get the bicarbonate I needed. Clearly because the breakdown wasn't complete. This problem caused me to lose some of my fast growing frags and that made me mad. So I implemented Plan B. This was something that I had been thinking about as I worked out the problems with the digester.
Plan B the Theory:
If bicarbonate allows me to dose large amounts of Kalk then why wouldn't carbonic acid. So, carbonate saltwater and then stuff Kalk in it until I get a PH around 8.3.
Plan B the Implmentation:
I bought the plug in version of the Soda Stream. I got this model because it seems to let me use less CO2. I am not sure of this but the amount I currently use (the one drop button) seems to be still a little too much but I have worked around it. Once I got everything set up I pulled the .89quarts (~900ml) from the tank and put it in the bottle. I then hit the button and boom, carbonated salt water. I poured approx. half of the bottle (~450ml) into my liter beaker and then filled the rest with more salt water from the tank. I then add ~11/16 tsp of Kalk to the solution. This brings the solution to approx. 8-8.15 ph (I am using the Salifert ph test so my numbers aren't very precise). I let this sit for about half an hour so that the precipitate can mostly come out solution. I decant the solution and then dose the decanted solution into my aquarium. You can dump this in and it will make things a bit cloudy but you won't get the storm that come with doing this with straight Kalk and no CO2. I don't recomend doing this though the dosing ensures that your water stays crystal clear.
The aftermath:
I thought about some of the things that were happening and I have ideas as to why they may be happening. First the amount of percipitate seems pretty large. I am pretty sure that this percipitate forms as a reaction with the disolved CO2 gas in the water. At first I thought the percipitate was unused Kalk. I tested this theory with HCL (muratic acid) and since I saw bubbles coming from the percipitate my assumption is that the percipitate is indeed calcium carbonate. With this idea in mind I decided to go poor mans calcium reactor and poured the percipitate with fresh salt water into the soda stream bottle and then I carbonated the whole thing. That did it. I was then able to use what came out of the bottle to once again add more Kalk and this time I was able to get nearly the same results with half of the Kalk.
I am still working out automation and delving into the nooks and crannies as my intuition takes me. I hope to be able to fully automate the process as time goes on. I am fully aware that using this might be stupid and why not just use a calcium reactor. For me this method provides some real advantages of a calcium reactor (and dosing for that matter). The first is the amount. If you just have some low consumers or you are fish only this is great because you don't need to deal with messy kalkwasser drips and you don't have to worry about dosing one part only of a two part. The Kalk only adds Ca/Alk (and the other minerals if you use Brightwell Kalk+2). No sodium is added and no chloride is added. Also an a very small tank calcium reactors don't really make a lot of sense this gives you all of the advantages of the calcium reactor without the overhead. And the final and most important piece in my mind is that the ph of the Kalk can be adjusted. You can push the ph to 8.3. This means you don't depress the ph in your display.
As I figure out more I will post here. Hope this might help give some more options, in the on going problem of mineralization.
