High Tide Aquatics

Who uses Kalkwasser in their ATO?

I’m dosing all for reef which is a single solution, so I could dose kalk when pH is low and otherwise AFR. But my guess is that’ll get too complicated. Maybe I just live with my pH, which is acceptable but not 8.4
 
I built a home made kalk mixer. Basically a tall tube with a pump plumbed in. The pump mixes for 30 seconds once per day.

There are "reactors" without pumps. Basically a sealed container, the input ATO water goes into a tube that exits at the bottom of the reactor, into a pile of kalk at the bottom. In theory this means that any fresh water forced in by the ATO (using a peristaltic pump, not a circulation pump!) is forced into the kalk and so all the water forced out of the reactor is saturated. So they say.
I built mine 20 years ago and it has a pump. If you run the pump too much, the kalk wears down the impellers.

I need a phosphate test kit to check for phosphates. I got onto the kalk mixer/reactor craze when it was the hot new thing, and it's just a semi-passive part of my top off.
My current tank is a wasteland, butmy previous 58 had huge coral growth when I added a CO2 Calcium reactor. I've not run the Co2/Ca reactor on my current system due to other things I'm dealing with (it was nitrates for a long time), but the kalk system on my ATO was low hanging fruit so it's attached and running.

V
 
@Vincerama2 where do you have the mix pump? is it at the top of the tube pointed down? I’d imagine you want it closer to the top so it doesn’t pull in kalk powder, but close enough to the bottom to actually disturb the settled kalk
 
max_nano said:
@Vincerama2 where do you have the mix pump? is it at the top of the tube pointed down? I’d imagine you want it closer to the top so it doesn’t pull in kalk powder, but close enough to the bottom to actually disturb the settled kalk
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mine is a tall tube. Midway down the tube I stuck in some tubing into the mixer. The pump is a MJ 400, cobbled to the pipes with vynil hose, but in a nutshell the input and output of the pump is inside the reactor body with the input at the top and the output at the bottom. Then inside the reactor, I put 90 degree elbows, one pointint up and one pointing down. The lower one has piece of PVC pipe attached that points to less than an inch of the bottom of the reactor, that;s the output. The upper one has a pvc pipe that points up to almost the top of the reactor, there is another 90 degree PVC conenctor at the top, this is the input of the pump. The 90 elbow at the top is so that when I put kalk powder into the reactor, it doesn't fall into the input pipe and grind up the pump impeller.
So when the pump runs, it draws water from the top, thorugh the pump then is aimed at the bottom of the reactor, where it kicks up the kalk powder that is undissolved. 30 seconds moves the cloud up almost until it reaches the input (which I want to avoi).

Now the ATO pushes RO/DI top off water into a John Guest valve that is at the level of the pump (so halfway up the reactor. And the output is near the very top of the reactor. The theory is that the pump mixes up the bottom/middle water into a saturated kalk solution. RO enters in the middle, in what should be saturated kalkwasser. In theory all the water is saturated because new water enters midway. At the top, where gravity has caused any precipitate from hanging around, is the output where kalk leaves to enter the sump.

The cap of the reactor is just a rubber 4" cap, and sometimes air does collect at the top between the top and the output line.

I'm not sure if there is CO2 "contamination" near the top, but from what I've read CO2 would precipitate out calcium carbonate, which I'm hoping settles to the bottom of the reactor.

I'll attach a photo later. But I took the plans off the internet.

V
 
sfsuphysics said:
Define weird? Kalkwasser is known for reducing phosphate, how much of an effect that has may be arguable though.
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Would it then release the PO4 later? if not, where does it go? If it is released later I suppose that after continuous dosing the impact would balance out
 
I read an article about this a while back. My understanding is because of the localized PH change it can trigger precipitation which can capture the phosphate. If something later results in the precipitate dissolving, it would release the phosphate back into the water column.
 
max_nano said:
Would it then release the PO4 later? if not, where does it go? If it is released later I suppose that after continuous dosing the impact would balance out
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Yeah I really don't know, it may release PO4 in the same way that aragonite sand helps buffer the water... in that it really doesn't because the pH never gets low enough to dissolve the sand, but I'm really just guessing here.

Here's a RHF article that talks about it
 
I’ve decided to forgo doing kalk. Just too much of a hassle for me to implement. Instead, I’m going to turn down my carx a bit a supplement the carx with that. This should help keep the ph more normalized.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Yeah I really don't know, it may release PO4 in the same way that aragonite sand helps buffer the water... in that it really doesn't because the pH never gets low enough to dissolve the sand, but I'm really just guessing here.

Here's a RHF article that talks about it
Click to expand...
Interesting read, thanks for sharing that! I wish I had something like the BRS test setup of multiple tanks to do comparisons, it would be interesting to see the difference in phos in a two tanks with and without kalk.
 
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