Neptune Aquatics

BOLUS vs. Kalkwasser

RandyC said:
I’m still at a loss as to why you want to stop using kalk. I think I read somewhere in another thread you mentioned that it can lead to phosphate buildup and subsequent release of phosphate at a later time, but it’s never been proven that that actually happens.

For kalk to bind and form calcium phosphate it requires a high pH which supposedly can happen to a limited extent in our tanks. And to actually dissolve the calcium phosphate that was formed to release phosphate back into the tank requires an acidic environment which normally does not occur in a reef tank.

Is there source material that your referencing to come to the decision that kalk is detrimental to long term reefing? I’d like to read up on it if there is any material.
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For me personally, there are mainly three reasons why I am using Balling light instead of Kalkwasser:

1. Better control of major elements by having three parts vs one/two parts which Kalkwasser is essentially (if used in connection with MAG), minus the added traces in two part.

2. Simplification of trace element dosing and limiting the risk of overdosing them. I like the idea of trace element dosing over relying on water changes, since this really helped me seeing corals grow much better. However, getting them dialed in individually is a hassle and the way they approach this with balling light seems a good middle ground to have control but not overdosing them.

3. Concerns about long term use of Kalkwasser, since this is no longer being used in Europe as per my understanding. The concession though is that using a Kalkreactor offsets, according to Fauna Marin, the negative impact from Kalkwasser but I have not used a reactor and was not planning to. Their 26 page marketing material/paper/instructions on how to apply BOLUS refers to these issues in parts but RHF is not in agreement with these reasons and Claude is not at all in agreement with how RHFs argues, so not sure what to think. Claude employs chemists and has a repution to lose despite being a business man and needing to push new ideas onto the market. They had a two hour German language live stream today to explain in more detail this, and there is an English speaking live stream planned this Friday I believe and an additional English write up on this topic is also supposed to come out on Friday. So maybe this will explain it for you or you will disagree in line with RHF.

Ancedotally, my nano tank had 18 months of Kalkdosing and I am not able to lower phosphates without chemical means, without feeding the tank (no fish in there), nothing dead, and even a 50% water change does not signficiantly change phosphates levels (only lanthanum and GFO does). So if leaching out of rocks or the sand is chemically not logical, then I am not sure where this is coming from but this is why his arguments resonate with me, if that makes sense.
 
Listening to the rappin' with reef bum episodes May 1st episode, guests Dr. Sanjay Joshi and Mike Paletta. They were discussing this topic. Haven't finished the episode. Then they started talking about ammonia dosing. Interesting ideas but I don't have the time to watch that closely to look and see if this all works. I will wait until the jury is out.

G
 
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Alexander1312 said:
Ancedotally, my nano tank had 18 months of Kalkdosing and I am not able to lower phosphates without chemical means, without feeding the tank (no fish in there), nothing dead, and even a 50% water change does not signficiantly change phosphates levels (only lanthanum and GFO does). So if leaching out of rocks or the sand is chemically not logical, then I am not sure where this is coming from but this is why his arguments resonate with me, if that makes sense.
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That doesn’t really support kalk binding with phosphate. For kalk to precipitate and release later on, there would need to be a constant source of phosphate (i.e., food, decaying livestock, etc.). If there had been a source of phosphates and you stopped (e.g., stopped feeding) and the calcium phosphate that had formed was being slowly released, eventually water changes would have diluted it out. There had to be a source of phosphates and if it wasn’t food and it wasn’t dying livestock, I would have looked into your water source. Potentially it could have been rock that hadn’t been fully cured or rock that had phosphate locked up, but I don’t think that’d very likely after 18 months.
 
RandyC said:
That doesn’t really support kalk binding with phosphate. For kalk to precipitate and release later on, there would need to be a constant source of phosphate (i.e., food, decaying livestock, etc.). If there had been a source of phosphates and you stopped (e.g., stopped feeding) and the calcium phosphate that had formed was being slowly released, eventually water changes would have diluted it out. There had to be a source of phosphates and if it wasn’t food and it wasn’t dying livestock, I would have looked into your water source. Potentially it could have been rock that hadn’t been fully cured or rock that had phosphate locked up, but I don’t think that’d very likely after 18 months.
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Sorry, I was not clear. The tank had fish etc for 18 months, but not anymore. But the phosphates remained despite water changes and no more feeding etc. Water source should be fine - tap water here is 28 TDS and goes through the same RODI as my other tank. I used dry rock and two little pieces of live rock. According to FM, Kalkwasser dosing (not kalkreactor) issues come out after 1.5 years, which in my case matches my timeline. If this is not correct then it is something else potentially. My other tank does not have these issues. Until I understand why no one in Europe does it anymore after doing it for quite some time there, I chose to not do it either. And the two other benefits are reasons enough for me to not do Kalk, and PH was highly volatile with Kalk so the benefits were not convincing enough.
 
Ok so I just spent some time trying to understand this. My first hot take was this is just insane from the standpoint of wanting stability in our tanks.

I tried to watch the video in the first post, I found it to be unwatchable within the first 10 min or so. So I read the white paper in the 3rd post, which was at least well written but makes so many unscientific claims that it was painful to read in parts. But at least it got me understanding the method and their reasons for it.

Then I read the thread on R2R where Randy weighs in. I have to say that I agree completely with what Randy has said so far. That it’s possible that people are seeing good results with this method for reasons we don’t really understand yet, but that their pseudoscientific rationalization/explanation is painfully wrong and misleading. There are so many layers of wrong I don’t have the patience to address them one by one.

It seems to me the main advantage that we can at least explain is that they are blasting full light early in the photoperiod with little or no ramp-up. This will quickly bring up the pH, which is normally lower than desired in the morning. Having the pH rise early and stay in the good growth range for the rest of the lighted period will clearly be good for corals. Changing the lighting schedule this way could be done with any dosing regimen and may be worth trying out.

People claiming that dosing all of your alkalinity at once in the morning and nothing for the next 23.5 hours doesn’t result in significant spikes and drops in alkalinity is frankly not believable.
 
JVU said:
Ok so I just spent some time trying to understand this. My first hot take was this is just insane from the standpoint of wanting stability in our tanks.

I tried to watch the video in the first post, I found it to be unwatchable within the first 10 min or so. So I read the white paper in the 3rd post, which was at least well written but makes so many unscientific claims that it was painful to read in parts. But at least it got me understanding the method and their reasons for it.

Then I read the thread on R2R where Randy weighs in. I have to say that I agree completely with what Randy has said so far. That it’s possible that people are seeing good results with this method for reasons we don’t really understand yet, but that their pseudoscientific rationalization/explanation is painfully wrong and misleading. There are so many layers of wrong I don’t have the patience to address them one by one.

It seems to me the main advantage that we can at least explain is that they are blasting full light early in the photoperiod with little or no ramp-up. This will quickly bring up the pH, which is normally lower than desired in the morning. Having the pH rise early and stay in the good growth range for the rest of the lighted period will clearly be good for corals. Changing the lighting schedule this way could be done with any dosing regimen and may be worth trying out.

People claiming that dosing all of your alkalinity at once in the morning and nothing for the next 23.5 hours doesn’t result in significant spikes and drops in alkalinity is frankly not believable.
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I started writing a similar reply several times but gave up, you have articulated what I was intending to say quite well. Agreed in whole.

The pdf is just so full of nonsense. Even to the point of making up words like “solus”…ugh.
 
JVU said:
Ok so I just spent some time trying to understand this. My first hot take was this is just insane from the standpoint of wanting stability in our tanks.

I tried to watch the video in the first post, I found it to be unwatchable within the first 10 min or so. So I read the white paper in the 3rd post, which was at least well written but makes so many unscientific claims that it was painful to read in parts. But at least it got me understanding the method and their reasons for it.

Then I read the thread on R2R where Randy weighs in. I have to say that I agree completely with what Randy has said so far. That it’s possible that people are seeing good results with this method for reasons we don’t really understand yet, but that their pseudoscientific rationalization/explanation is painfully wrong and misleading. There are so many layers of wrong I don’t have the patience to address them one by one.

It seems to me the main advantage that we can at least explain is that they are blasting full light early in the photoperiod with little or no ramp-up. This will quickly bring up the pH, which is normally lower than desired in the morning. Having the pH rise early and stay in the good growth range for the rest of the lighted period will clearly be good for corals. Changing the lighting schedule this way could be done with any dosing regimen and may be worth trying out.

People claiming that dosing all of your alkalinity at once in the morning and nothing for the next 23.5 hours doesn’t result in significant spikes and drops in alkalinity is frankly not believable.
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+1 this being well articulated.

My main reaction initially was the same as this:
People claiming that dosing all of your alkalinity at once in the morning and nothing for the next 23.5 hours doesn’t result in significant spikes and drops in alkalinity is frankly not believable.
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The #1 thing everyone talks about is stability, and everyone goes out of their way to dose all the things slowly, but this method says do an alk spike every morning. The #1 source of issues I've encountered, including RTN or fast bleaching, was from alk spikes. That seems concerning.

I think the idea of spiking lights early in the day though is compelling. Even dosing Kalk overnight and running a reverse photo period fuge, my pH curve is not flat and hits the minimum in the morning before lights on. Tossing the lights on aggressively, to get the pH back up quickly, and compensating by reducing it gradually over the day, seems pretty interesting. That doesn't seem natural, but neither is an overnight pH drop, and it's not like a standard AB+ lighting schedule is natural either.

I might try that idea at some point, but the other ideas I look forward to other reefers trying.

I also don't fully grok the kalk issue, beyond a premise that something is going on with impurities. However I'm pro-kalk generally, so I'm biased. Similarly I'm not clear what is or is not the norm in the EU, nor immediately clear what something a group does located on one continent versus another would imply for veracity of an idea.
 
This is the English version of a previously released German video, which he enhanced with content and context following the initial release and the reactions from folks on the video and the ‘how to use’/manual document.

While it is in large parts a commercial for Balling light (and presented by someone whose native langage is not English and who never received formal language training in English), and a recommendation of the BOLUS method, he discusses the point around the precipitation issue, starting at minute 13, for those (few :)) of you who are open to the idea that using Kalk could have downsides longer term in reef tanks, even though the textbook chemistry might not always support this.

 
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Alexander1312 said:
This is the English version of a previously released German video, which he enhanced with content and context following the initial release and the reactions from folks on the video and the ‘how to use’/manual document.

While it is in large parts a commercial for Balling light (and presented by someone whose native langage is not English and who never received formal language training in English), and a recommendation of the BOLUS method, he discusses the point around the precipitation issue, starting at minute 13, for those (few :)) of you who are open to the idea that using Kalk could have downsides longer term in reef tanks, even though the textbook chemistry might not always support this.

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OK, non textbook chemistry is called pseudoscience.. EcoAqualizer supported non textbook chemistry.

I forgot to post this a while back.... earlier you mentioned Kalkwasser is no longer used in Germany. I asked a prominent German pump manufacturer if they felt that was true, they said no, its still widely used. I suspect in the balling circles, its not widely used, nor is its use widely supported.
 
All alk suppliments used to be dosed as a bolus before there were accurate and affordable and programmable peri pumps - except for the folks that did DIY gravity drips.

I squint at most of what Hans and Claude say because they never seem to have documeted results to back it up, they say that they can't share data because they are a for profit company...so, squint.
 
Thales said:
All alk suppliments used to be dosed as a bolus before there were accurate and affordable and programmable peri pumps - except for the folks that did DIY gravity drips.

I squint at most of what Hans and Claude say because they never seem to have documeted results to back it up, they say that they can't share data because they are a for profit company...so, squint.
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Yes, one of the main points Claude and Doug (Frag Farm) are making is that before the dosing pumps, when alk was dosed all at once, corals looked better. This predates me so no idea if this resonates or not. Obviously, very subjective, and going back to an approach which might have worked then but is inferior to what we are doing now is what nobody wants to do. They subsequently hedged initial statements that all at once dosing is not recommended if not sodium bi carbonate, and clarified that using Kalk through a Kalkreactor would not cause any long term precipitation issues (vs. dripping Kalk). There are plans to come out with updated documentation by October.

Lot’s of squinting since they introduced this concept, so the skepticism worked this time to not follow into a potential marketing trap or listen to the main who wears a lab coat. I am surprised that they would say they cannot share the data because they are a for profit company (potentially lost in translation?). I know they do not want to share what’s in balling light, other than it contains sodium bicarb, but I do not believe the data how they got to their current approach is something they want to protect, as this was done with their customers (reefers club members, 200 euro/208 USD annual membership). The reason I believe why they do not share the data is because it is probably not available as they/reefers club members plus the two coral farms in Germany and UK came to the results through (unstructured) trial and error only. And, as you said, there was no documentation done throughout when other things did not work, since there was no one who had time to do this (Frag Farm is very small I believe, and Fauna M has only 40 employees but sells globally, and has to deal with German bureaucracy of doing business, which is significant). Also, BOLUS is a name for something everyone can replicate easily without Balling light, so not much in it for them from a profit perspective, except highlighting that Balling light works particularly well with this idea, and that they ‘came up’ with this new - old approach.

I have no stake in this I am just curious how this will play out, which is why I keep posting this stuff. I am also ‘fascinated’ by the passionate squinting, which led to personal attacks on them and their employees in other forums. This reaction makes me squint as some might have an agenda to push back beyond just criticizing their lack of scientific rigor. Anyway, I hope Claude will find time to talk to us about it and respond to our skeptism live, as he promised to me he would.
 
This is another video on everyone's favorite topic :). There is not too much new content in there other than Mike Paletta now endorsing this method, and Claude cannot hide his dissent of RHF’s pushback. I do not like how this topic became so divisive, but I have learned that this has been a perennial issue in the reef-keeping world, even before Facebook and Co.

We will see what folks say about the revised paper they will release later this year.

One of the less prominent takeaways of this method, though, is the thought around dosing minor trace elements during the daytime during the photoperiod and not at night, which is, e.g., what would happen if two parts was dosed at night.

I'm still curious how this will play out eventually.

 
RandyC said:
I’m still at a loss as to why you want to stop using kalk. I think I read somewhere in another thread you mentioned that it can lead to phosphate buildup and subsequent release of phosphate at a later time, but it’s never been proven that that actually happens.

For kalk to bind and form calcium phosphate it requires a high pH which supposedly can happen to a limited extent in our tanks. And to actually dissolve the calcium phosphate that was formed to release phosphate back into the tank requires an acidic environment which normally does not occur in a reef tank.

Is there source material that your referencing to come to the decision that kalk is detrimental to long term reefing? I’d like to read up on it if there is any material.
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Ya phosphate can actually bind in rock and then leach out. Especially when starting a new tank with dry rock, if not running gfo in the begging those rocks will leach out phosphates if not soaked long enough before starting a tank with them. Also with my Kalkwasser dosing, it’s all done at night, same with my alk dosing, there is no dosing during the photo period. They get all their alk for the day before lights on. Same as in the Kalkwasser video I put out. So I’m pretty sure you’re achieving similar results with my kalk method. But I understand as a newer reefer always thirsty to achieve the best. Let us know how it all goes. Haven’t read the paper or sales pitch yet but I will.
 
Alexander1312 said:
Sorry, I was not clear. The tank had fish etc for 18 months, but not anymore. But the phosphates remained despite water changes and no more feeding etc. Water source should be fine - tap water here is 28 TDS and goes through the same RODI as my other tank. I used dry rock and two little pieces of live rock. According to FM, Kalkwasser dosing (not kalkreactor) issues come out after 1.5 years, which in my case matches my timeline. If this is not correct then it is something else potentially. My other tank does not have these issues. Until I understand why no one in Europe does it anymore after doing it for quite some time there, I chose to not do it either. And the two other benefits are reasons enough for me to not do Kalk, and PH was highly volatile with Kalk so the benefits were not convincing enough.
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Where those dry rocks you used cured or just added straight to the new system?
 
Thales said:
All alk suppliments used to be dosed as a bolus before there were accurate and affordable and programmable peri pumps - except for the folks that did DIY gravity drips.

I squint at most of what Hans and Claude say because they never seem to have documeted results to back it up, they say that they can't share data because they are a for profit company...so, squint.
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Oh man I remember that! I use to use a IV bag that had the little valves on the lines, they worked so good!!!
 
as a chemist I have a real hard time understanding how bolus prevent precipitation vs slow addition. In a few of his videos he mentions some chemistry but is quick to point out he is not a chemist, “trust me I got guys in the lab”. I think the point he was trying to make is perhaps bicarbonate is a better “buffer” than carbonate, but not sure what to do with this info feels more marketing than science.
 
Alexander1312 said:
This is another video on everyone's favorite topic :). There is not too much new content in there other than Mike Paletta now endorsing this method, and Claude cannot hide his dissent of RHF’s pushback. I do not like how this topic became so divisive, but I have learned that this has been a perennial issue in the reef-keeping world, even before Facebook and Co.

We will see what folks say about the revised paper they will release later this year.

One of the less prominent takeaways of this method, though, is the thought around dosing minor trace elements during the daytime during the photoperiod and not at night, which is, e.g., what would happen if two parts was dosed at night.

I'm still curious how this will play out eventually.

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I watched that, honestly I wish Mike Paletta was absent, he was very rude, self absorbed and distracting, I also think that Keith wasn't asking the right questions. I wish Claude had a better chance to talk and explain it with out so much of the noise.
 
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