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Making or Buying 2 Part

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Tumbleweed

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I am going to start dosing 2 Part on my tank, and I have been doing some research on it. How you can make your own, what it does to your tank and so forth. My question is to those out there that are using a 2 Part solution in their tank how many of you make your own solutions, and how many just buy the solution? Also what pumps are you using to dose it into your tank? Recommendations on a certain brand or what to look out for.
Thanks
 
Calcium chloride for the calcium, some buy from BRS, some use Dow Flakes (if you can find it when you're in snow country), some (including me) use stuff from a pool supply store which is all the same thing.

Soda Bicarb for the alkalinity (I don't think anyone can touch Arm & Hammer baking soda prices as costco)

mix both separately with RO/DI water, dose as necessary.

I used to do it manually every morning, but I forgot too many times so I simply use peristaltic pumps to pump about 15 minutes worth each day and that keeps my calcium and my alkalinity stable.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Calcium chloride for the calcium, some buy from BRS, some use Dow Flakes (if you can find it when you're in snow country), some (including me) use stuff from a pool supply store which is all the same thing.

Soda Bicarb for the alkalinity (I don't think anyone can touch Arm & Hammer baking soda prices as costco)

mix both separately with RO/DI water, dose as necessary.

I used to do it manually every morning, but I forgot too many times so I simply use peristaltic pumps to pump about 15 minutes worth each day and that keeps my calcium and my alkalinity stable.
Click to expand...

Do you bake your Baking Soda or use it straight from the box?

Which brand of Calcium Chloride do you use and where do you get it from?
 
Straight from the box for the baking soda, if there's a pH issue I don't see it at all.

I use Leslie's Hardness plus, it's an anhydrous version, which basically means the water is sucked out and it's more CaCl2 per weight, about 20% more, I had to drive down to Burlingame to a pool supply store to get it, since San Francisco isn't big on pools :)
 
I buy from BRS, but may consider buying at Leslie's pool supply sometime. I found manual dosing to be too tedious so I splurged on a Litermeter III. It's been great. You don't need that nice of a system, but it makes it very easy to make adjustments and I got the 3rd pump to add top off water.
 
I use a half concentration of Randy's formula, don't know why but I'd get too much precipitation with the full strength (which I believe is mixed to saturation point, but I could be wrong), then simply dose twice as much.
 
So do you use half of the 500g (2 1/2c)
or
250g (1 1/4c) per gallon.

Then you double to dose into the tank.
Do you then pour the entire mixture in at once into your sump?
 
I dilute it to half strength, which seems to be both of my options you stated :) 200g per gallon for CaCl2 (it's 20% stronger, so I need to take that into account) and 300g of baking soda, mix up about 4 gallons at a time, then every time I change it out I test my Ca & Alk, and add a little more or a little less as needed rather than adjusting the dosing pumps. But each day my dosing pumps come on for 15 minutes which trickles the amount I want into my sump.
 
I bake the baking soda, according to Randy's formula for low ph. Also use Leslie's pool hardness control, or whatever it's called.
 
I just use the BRS stuff and use the formula to get a higher PH. Dose 5 times a day for 15 mins using Drews dosers. I ensure that the CA and ALk do not dose at the same time .
 
Ok so using Randy's Recipe #2 and with having about 130 gal of total water.
I have a current Calcium Reading of 400 and a Alk reading of 6 dkh. I used his dosing calculator and to bring my Calcium up to 420 and my Alk to 9 dkh I need to add 17.9 oz of the calcium mix and 18.8 oz of the Alk mix. It says to only dose 1/3 to 1/2 of this amount and to test the readings the next day. My plan is to put in 8 oz of the calcium mix and the same for the Alk mix. Does this sound correct?
I am also going to be dosing this manually so I was planning to add these mixture slowly over 10-15 minutes 1 at a time into my sump.
I am just checking to make sure my numbers and plan are correct.
 
Alright let me try to do this math in my head, btw need the total gallons of your tank, since 100ppm on a 10g tank is a lot less product you need than 100ppm on a 100g tank.

The calcium two part runs at 37000 ppm per gallon of mix up. I'm assuming by pump rate you mean how much per minute, so 0.5 ounces per minute.

If you lose 100ppm of Ca per week, thats that's about 15 ppm per day, so to get that out of you'd need about 1/20th an ounce per gallon of water you have. so if it's a 100g tank that's 5 ounces, and you'd need to run your pumps for 10 minutes.

Ok I think that math is right... I'm a tad out of it now, so I don't promise accuracy, but it looks right.

As to the BRS site saying Leslies had problems, that might be the case, I've never had any issues, however they have an MSDS which must be strictly adhered to (you'll notice a range of numbers for some items too), so I doubt it was a terrible problem. And I doubt BRS has some super quality control over their product, if I had to guess they simply are a repackager of product they buy, so they could very well have problems as well. And yeah, I'd say they threw that out there to pump their product up, just about all businesses do that in some way.
 
To tune my dosers in I added manually for a couple of days and did lots of testing to see what the right daily amount was to maintain the levels I wanted. I then let each doser go for 10 minutes into measuring cups to determine how much they put out . I then adjusted my dosing accordingly and spread it out over 4 hour intervals during the day.

So for instance if it to 50 ml of each to get the levels I wanted and I got 10 ml of solution in 10 minutes I would run them for a total of 50 minutes or roughly 8 1/2 minutes 6x per day. So start at 12:01 am leave on till 12:09.30 for Calcium then go from 12:15 to 12:24.30 for Alk (repeat every 4 hours)

I then continue to test every other day for about a week to see if this is maintaining and increase or decrease as necessary. Now I test much less frequently (maybe 1x per month) and again adjust up or down as necessary.

Remember dosing to maintain will differ based on tank size and the salt and frequency of water changes. There may be a perfect formula you can use to get your levels where you want but I think you would be hard pressed to maintain it without some individual tweaking depending on the previous.
 
I use soda ash and CaCl2 (both from leslies...but I might just get baking soda next time). I mix at about 1/2cup per gallon. This works out well for my 5x perday dosing using drew dosing pumps from BRS.
 
Dowflake and straight baking soda for me. I was getting too much precipitation with the sodium carbonate, so switched to bicarbonate. Haven't had any problems.
 
For my first dosing what is the most I should add at one time? For my 130gal tank it suggests 17 and 19 oz for cal and Alk. I planned on dosing 8 oz. How much and how long should I take to dose this amount? 8 for Calc. and 8 for Alk.
 
seminolecpa said:
To tune my dosers in I added manually for a couple of days and did lots of testing to see what the right daily amount was to maintain the levels I wanted. I then let each doser go for 10 minutes into measuring cups to determine how much they put out . I then adjusted my dosing accordingly and spread it out over 4 hour intervals during the day.

So for instance if it to 50 ml of each to get the levels I wanted and I got 10 ml of solution in 10 minutes I would run them for a total of 50 minutes or roughly 8 1/2 minutes 6x per day. So start at 12:01 am leave on till 12:09.30 for Calcium then go from 12:15 to 12:24.30 for Alk (repeat every 4 hours)

I then continue to test every other day for about a week to see if this is maintaining and increase or decrease as necessary. Now I test much less frequently (maybe 1x per month) and again adjust up or down as necessary.

Remember dosing to maintain will differ based on tank size and the salt and frequency of water changes. There may be a perfect formula you can use to get your levels where you want but I think you would be hard pressed to maintain it without some individual tweaking depending on the previous.
Click to expand...

Thank you Bryan. :) Gotcha. I'll work these suggestions into my system. Your post is clear, concise and appreciated.
 
I just hooked up 2 Drew's Dosers from BRS, this weekend, and I bought BRS's bulks goods (CA, ALk and MG) to make Reciept #1 from scratch.

I'm was going to call BRS tomorrow, now that everything is plumbed, to see how long the timers should run. Question is: If my Ca levels are currently at 425 and ALK is at 9 DKH and the pumps are running dripping at the rate of 0.5 oz or 14.79ml every 10 minutes: How long and often should I set the timers for to maintain this ideal balance in apx 115 gallon system (I'm losing about 100 parts of CA per week and lose 1 DKH every 1-2 days). Once I figure this out, I would recommend this as your solution.

I read on BRS's site that Dow's CA formula sold at pool supply places has had some problems in the past. So, not sure is sfphysics has seen those comments yet or BRS is hyping there product over Dow's.

While I paid about $70 for the kit, I believe there are enough chemicals to make 6 months worth of formulas for each CA, ALK and MG. That seems, to me, fairly cost effective if you don't mind mixing stuff yourself. The Dosers seem to be of very good quality (4 rollers to prevent back siphoning). I'll post my follow up comments on my tank journal thread once I have a better idea how long the kit, actually, lasts for and updated comments on the pumps in 3 to 6 months. I hope this helps.

If anyone has an answer to the timer questions before I check with BRS please feel free to post here or pm me.





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