Supplementing Triton Core 7 with Kalk to reduce cost? I'm trying it, have you?

[Wiskey]

Hello all!

I have a 135 gallon SPS dominated tank with 50 Gallon sump and 40 gallon frag tank, I set it up using Triton Core 7 with DOS pumps and a Trident and it's worked very well to this point. The problem is cost, as the demand has increased so has the uptake, as of a week ago I was dosing 80 ML/Day across the 4 elements (though I combine the alk ones to save on pump heads and dose 160 ML of it).

This means that I'm spending over $1000 per year on Core 7 additives alone, and that's a cost I want to reduce.

For the last week I've been mixing 5G containers of Kalk and dosing using one of the DOS pumps set to 5000 ML/Day which has allowed me to cut my Triton dosing back to 35 ML/Day which is a substantial cost savings given the cost of Kalk. It easily allows me to add a nice Kalk Reactor to automate this for my regular travel. Plus it adds a second form of toping off in case I have another topoff pump failure I can go longer before issues pop up.

So far the results have been positive, PH is fantastic, levels are stable, cost is down. I was curious if anyone else has tried this and what your results were? I'm also curious if I will have issues with trace elements in the long term, and if I should be prepared to supplement that at some point? We never used to worry about trace elements, are they really needed now?

Whiskey

 

[blaxsun]

I'm assuming the 5000ml/day is a typo! If you're using the Triton Core7 Base Elements, you should get 16,000ml from the Bulk Edition ($147) which gives you 200 days @80ml/day. But that's good to know about the alternative you came up with - I often find myself considering the Triton supplements.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Hello all!

I have a 135 gallon SPS dominated tank with 50 Gallon sump and 40 gallon frag tank, I set it up using Triton Core 7 with DOS pumps and a Trident and it's worked very well to this point. The problem is cost, as the demand has increased so has the uptake, as of a week ago I was dosing 80 ML/Day across the 4 elements (though I combine the alk ones to save on pump heads and dose 160 ML of it).

This means that I'm spending over $1000 per year on Core 7 additives alone, and that's a cost I want to reduce.

For the last week I've been mixing 5G containers of Kalk and dosing using one of the DOS pumps set to 5000 ML/Day which has allowed me to cut my Triton dosing back to 35 ML/Day which is a substantial cost savings given the cost of Kalk. It easily allows me to add a nice Kalk Reactor to automate this for my regular travel. Plus it adds a second form of toping off in case I have another topoff pump failure I can go longer before issues pop up.

So far the results have been positive, PH is fantastic, levels are stable, cost is down. I was curious if anyone else has tried this and what your results were? I'm also curious if I will have issues with trace elements in the long term, and if I should be prepared to supplement that at some point? We never used to worry about trace elements, are they really needed now?

Whiskey

You can always use a trace element supplement like TM A and K and use the limewater (kalkwasser) for calcium and alk.

 

[Wiskey]

I'm assuming the 5000ml/day is a typo! If you're using the Triton Core7 Base Elements, you should get 16,000ml from the Bulk Edition ($147) which gives you 200 days @80ml/day. But that's good to know about the alternative you came up with - I often find myself considering the Triton supplements.

That's not quite right. The 5,000 ML/Day is my Kalk that I'm adding, just over a gallon a day, this allowed me to reduce Triton Core 7 dosing by 40 ML/Day. One thing this experiment has taught me is exactly how concentrated that Core 7 really is.

For the Core 7 it's the 4x4 bulk kit (4L of each part), for $150. That's 3750 ML (Because I use a gallon jug to mix) and at current 80 ML/Day each part per day dosing it lasts 46 days. That means I'm buying the supplements 8 times per year, which adds up to $1200 plus tax. Call it $1300.

But,.. the worst part is that this number is increasing rapidly. In the last 6 months my uptake has doubled due to growth, and with any luck it will double again in 6 more months.

If it did last 200 days I'd never consider switching, the system has worked very well, but at this cost point I need to consider other alternatives that will also work work well.

Thank you,
Whiskey

 

[Wiskey]

You can always use a trace element supplement like TM A and K and use the limewater (kalkwasser) for calcium and alk.

This is a great point! Actually the further I went down this rabbit hole the more options for this I started finding. BRS has a hybrid method of the regular two part like I used to do back in 2005 with the baked baking soda and driveway de-icer (you have no idea how hard that was to find in Phoenix, AZ). In the Hybrid method they use the TM A and K and add the TM part "C" as well which is basically reef salt without the salt. It keeps the ions in balance. I'm now thinking I can run Kalk flat out, and whatever the difference in uptake is I can make up with that and save an extra $400 or so a year. It won't be as easy, but once I figure out what I'm doing it will be a simple process to repeat reliably.

I can't thank you enough for that 2 part article BTW, I used it for 10 years and still have it bookmarked.

Whiskey

 

[Hugo’s_Reef]

This is a great point! Actually the further I went down this rabbit hole the more options for this I started finding. BRS has a hybrid method of the regular two part like I used to do back in 2005 with the baked baking soda and driveway de-icer (you have no idea how hard that was to find in Phoenix, AZ). In the Hybrid method they use the TM A and K and add the TM part "C" as well which is basically reef salt without the salt. It keeps the ions in balance. I'm now thinking I can run Kalk flat out, and whatever the difference in uptake is I can make up with that and save an extra $400 or so a year. It won't be as easy, but once I figure out what I'm doing it will be a simple process to repeat reliably.

I can't thank you enough for that 2 part article BTW, I used it for 10 years and still have it bookmarked.

Whiskey

Are you still running the Triton and Kalkwasser combined ? How have you liked the results so far ?

 

[Wiskey]

Are you still running the Triton and Kalkwasser combined ? How have you liked the results so far ?

Honestly,.. no. But not because it failed in any conventional sense. It's like the old joke "Task Failed Successfully".

Here's what happened.

First couple days, I was thrilled! My use of Triton went down to almost nothing, and PH shot up from a high of 8.1 to like 8.5, I stopped pulling air from outside into my skimmer and got it to go from 8.2 to 8.4 and it's the happiest I've ever been with PH.

At about day 3, my Triton usage started to climb again, and I saw coral growth starting to take off! I have a camera that takes daily shots automatically, it's bolted to the top of my cabinet, and from comparing pictures I'd almost say that growth rates doubled.

About the week mark I was dosing more trident then before, and the growth continued to accelerate.

At around 2 weeks, I'd was leveling off dosing 1 gallon of Kalk and about 1.5 times as much triton then I was before. Growth was like nothing I've ever seen.

This obviously didn't fix my budgeting problem, but I wasn't going back now after I saw how much my corals liked the higher PH.

My next step was trying to reduce cost by going to the BRS 2 part + Mag + C and trace. This was much cheaper than triton, but I found out that it was much less concentrated. Now I was dosing my 2 Liter continers in less than 4 days. Not going to work for me, becuase the cost was very similar now for the two mixtures. BRS was a little cheaper, but not enough.

At this point I was looking at well over $2000 per year for dosing, so it was an easy choice. I bought an open box return CA reactor off BRS, It's a monster,.. I calculated that it holds over 10 gallons in the two reactor chambers alone, and it was expensive. But the ROI with that much expense in two part will come very fast, plus I have a dedicated filter room, and I'm planning for a 300G tank this year sometime so getting the big one now will pay off.

OH,.. and PH with the reactor. I went back to pulling air from outside into my skimmer and it holds steady at 8.2-8.4 with 4200 ML of fully saturated Kalk being dosed per day, and a fuge on reverse lighting. I'm still thrilled with that, and a side benefit is that the PH doesn't go up like crazy if I'm traveling with the dog for a week like it used to. My growth continues to be stellar, and

Whiskey