Kalk dosing (via Apex), need some advice

gig

gig

New member
so I recently started using my PM Kalk reactor more regularly but via top off (versus a drip). Now that my SPS are growing out, my ALK tends to drop fast, even with 27G water changes every two weeks. I had some issues about a month ago (loss of color with some, 2 pr 3 corals bleached and died). I discovered my ALK was at 5. So I got my ALK back up to 8 over the course of a week using Kent's super dKH.

I've been testing over the past two weeks, and I'm struggling to stay at 8, let alone higher. My PH is around 8.05 to 8.09 during the day and drops to 7.9 to 7.92 at night.

I decide the top off isn't working fast enough, as my tank is in a cool and humid basement (even with two dehumidifiers). So I hooked up my "drews" doser from BRS last night to my PM Kalk reactor and Apex. The doser will does 1.6 ml per minute.

So right now, I have it doing the following setup:

At lights off around 10:30pm, it will dose for 5 min, then shut off for 15 min, then back on. this will cycle until the lights are back on around 11:30am.

so first night, I didn't see any change in pH, but will need to check my ALK tonight. But I was hoping to see it higher than 7.9 overnight, but no luck.

I think with the water volume of approx 230G with sumps, maybe 8ml per 5 min isn't enough. I calculated over a 13 hour period, I'm dosing 312ml of Kalk.

I wonder if I should maybe try running the drip all night? which would does 1248ml or maybe just double it, which is the safer thing to do and see results.

Any ideas?
 
If the issue has not been resolved or for anyone else with the same problem...

I have found kalk can keep up with cal/alk demands of a soft coral tank but has trouble keeping up with a sps dominated aquarium. You have a few options, you can add vinegar to your kalk solution to increase calcium ions. The recommended limit is 3 tsp kalk and 45 ml vinegar per gallon. You will need to go slowly and monitor your tank since you are adding a carbon. Next, you can manually dose baking soda or baked baking soda dissolved in ro water to help raise alk daily. You can use a dosing pump setup for your cal/alk/mag and use kalk for top off and to help balance PH. Finally, you could use a calcium reactor. I have no experience with reactors but this method seems to be popular with larger/higher demand aquariums.
 
Gig, I am having the same issue! tested a few weeks ago and this is what I had:
Alk 5
Cal 420
Mag 1350

Alk 5!!!!!! I didn't really freak out as all my SPS are growing fine an very healthy. I also use Kalk in my ATO, but it can't keep up with the Alk demands. Currently I am adding Tropic Marin Bio-Calcium to supplement. It adds quite of bit of Alk, so Calc dose not go up too much. Once I have exhausted the bucket supply that I already had in anticipation of something like this as my tank matured, I'm going to switch to 2-part with an auto doser, expensive set up but it'll keep my tank running smoothly :)

I'm now at:
Alk 8
Cal 430-440
Mag 1350

Hope that helps.
 
hey Eric, thanks for that, I think I will need to move to the two part as well, thankfully I'm halfway there as I bought one doser to regulate my Kalk. I have tested my ALK pretty much daily (thankfully it's a really easy/quick test using API). It's hovering at 8-ish and if I go about 2-3 days it will fall into the 7 range, that's when I mix up 5 teaspoons of Super dKH and dump into my sump. I upped the doseage for my Kalk drip (doubled it) that only drips 13 hours during the night and it's still not really keeping up. I might swith to cutting back the doseage and going 24 hours and see what that does. I'm really not conerned about the ph dropping at night (right now it's around 8.05 and drops just under 8.0 at night).

sure gets interesting when the SPS starts to grow! lol
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top