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Who uses Kalkwasser in their ATO?

Rostato

Rostato

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My ph is peaking at 8-8.1 with my calcium reactor and my co2 scrubber 100% recirculating through my skimmer. This means that my ball valve is completely closed and the co2 scrubber is is pulling only air from the skimmer cup.

If you don’t follow my tank journals then you don’t know that I am a huge proponent of keeping a ph of 8.3 or higher to achieve what I believe is significantly more growth and also faster coralline algae growth. I want the coralline to grow so that any other pest algae can‘t grow. This gave me a lot of success on my reefer 250 and the initial stages of my 450. Obviously faster coral growth is a good thing. Since adding my calcium reactor I have seen an uptick in pest algae growth, and a slower growth of coralline algae. There are probably other factors involved, but these are the main issues I see.

I had to switch from 2 part to a calcium reactor because I was dosing way too much and causing salinity swings and needing to top up my dosing containers once a week. After doing this my ph sank to its current levels.

I really want to bring that ph up to the 8.3-8.4 range again, but the only solution I can come up with is kalkwaser. I really don’t want to add a reactor to my tank because I don’t have the room, and it’s yet another fail point. I also don’t want to add kalk directly to my ATO because it shortens the lifespan of the pump, and will require me to clean the ATO Container regularly. I’m way to lazy to remove the 10 gallon container, and all the wires and lines to clean it.

This brings me to the Tunze Calcium Dispenser. This seems like a win win, but I have read that maybe the solution from this particular reactor may not be in the 12 range like ‘fully saturated“ kalk.

For those of you who say “don’t chase ph.” I say, get your tank ph I the 8.3-8.4 range and tell me you don’t have better growth and an overall healthier tank. I dare you.

Can you see I’ve gone down the rabbit hole?

So, my questions are...
How do those of you who use kalk in their ATO keep the solution fully saturated?
How do you keep your ATO container clean?
Should I just suck it up and deal with a lower ph and slower growth?
Am I crazy?

I’m only trying to use this solution to raise my ph. I couldn’t care less if it raises my calcium or alkalinity.
 
Don't do kalk in ato. It's a nightmare and inconsistent.

I'm doing kalk in ato for my frag tank right now and I'm working on switching to 2 part dosing. Depending on PH and evaporation it gives way too many inconsistencies.

I'm considering switching to dosing a fixed amount of saturated kalk for the PH reasons you're looking at it. Dosing a fixed amount should help be much more consistent with alk increases. Can probably do a relatively cheap doser (I don't think the amounts will need to be super exact) and then build in ph alarm shutoffs in apex in case the doser sticks on or something.
 
Meshmez said:
Don't do kalk in ato. It's a nightmare and inconsistent.

I'm doing kalk in ato for my frag tank right now and I'm working on switching to 2 part dosing. Depending on PH and evaporation it gives way too many inconsistencies.

I'm considering switching to dosing a fixed amount of saturated kalk for the PH reasons you're looking at it. Dosing a fixed amount should help be much more consistent with alk increases. Can probably do a relatively cheap doser (I don't think the amounts will need to be super exact) and then build in ph alarm shutoffs in apex in case the doser sticks on or something.
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That’s kind of what I was thinking. But how does one dose saturated kalk without a reactor? I do have my old DOS still hooked up that I could use. And I have a BRS doser. But I fear that I would have to dose a lot of kalk to keep the ph up.
 
Rostato said:
That’s kind of what I was thinking. But how does one dose saturated kalk without a reactor? I do have my old DOS still hooked up that I could use. And I have a BRS doser. But I fear that I would have to dose a lot of kalk to keep the ph up.
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I can't tell you how much you would need to dose. But there is nothing special about a kalk reactor. You can mix fully saturated kalk and put it in a container to dose from. You just have to refill it more often.
 
Meshmez said:
I can't tell you how much you would need to dose. But there is nothing special about a kalk reactor. You can mix fully saturated kalk and put it in a container to dose from. You just have to refill it more often.
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On the other hand, I think you could find room to fit a small reactor, and then you just draw water from your ato. Which really makes it a low maintenance option
 
brightwell has a boost pH+ chemical that raises pH and not alk. I havent used it yet. once I hook up my calcium reactor, I'll probably run into the same problem also. currently my pH sits 8.27 to 8.47 running a co2 scrubber and pickling lime dosing.

reefbuilders.com

Boost pH+ by Brightwell Aquatics Raise pH without Affecting Alkalinity | Reef Builders | The Reef and Saltwater Aquarium Blog

Boost pH+ is a completely new kind of additive from Brightwell Aquatics with one simple goal, to raise the pH of reef aquarium water without affecting alkalinity. The growth of aquarium corals is…
reefbuilders.com

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I’ve been keeping mag 1400ish over last few weeks and have seen an uptick in coralline growth. There are some articles on r2r that support coralline algae growing better with slightly elevated mag levels due to it using more mag
 
I've decided to stop using kalk in my ATO after seeing how much my ATO is running from fan cooling. I've got a nice layer of residual on the bottom of my ATO tank that I'm just not going to stir or add any more until I empty it. I plan to add another container specifically for kalk and dose from there.

I was pretty surprised to see just how much my pH went up after connecting skimmer's air inlet to outside air. And I have a CO2 scrubber that gives a good boost as well.
 
Before my tank was restarted i was dosing kak as ato. Worked great but you do need to build in fail safes withauto shutoff and ways to shut off the kalk and by pass it with just rodi.


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For those that are dosing kalk:
Do you use a reactor with a stirrer?
How much do you dose for your tank volume?
What’s the impact on pH?
 
So the basics are you add well above the amount of kalkwasser that will make the water saturated, and when the water is saturated the rest stays as a wet blob at the bottom of your reactor, in order to dose you pump freshwater into the reactor and that pushes out the saturated kalkwasser water into the tank, and some mixing device (stirring rod or pump) mixes the water so that the solution remains saturated because you have all that extra stuff at the bottom. So long story short, there are different types of reactors.

How much do you dose, depends upon what you want to do, if you want to use it primarily as a daily top off to help alkalinity and calcium levels you find out how much is necessary via a calculator, although there is a limit to this in that you can't dose more than your daily evaporation rate so if you have too many stony corals this will not work as a stand alone solution to do that. You can also use it as a way to pump up the pH of the tank, but regardless of what you use it for you should never dose a large amount all at once and call it a day, saturated kalkwasser solution has a pH of 12.4 so you will spike your pH pretty hard then come down so spacing it out into smaller dosing is definitely the preferred method.

Unfortunately there is no strict "tank this size, dose this much" type of calculation you can do. It will add calcium and alkalinity to the tank so you need to know what that consumption via testing, once you know that you can use any of the online calculators to tell you how much to add. "Tank volume X, current calcium Y, you want Z" and it'll say how much to add, so break that up through however many dosing amounts. pH increase on the other hand is way more tricky, and unfortunately there are too many variables to have a calculator to do so, so again dose what you think is good throughout the day, watch what your pH does, and call that the dosing amount, but do keep in mind you'll also be adding calcium and alkalinity regardless so you do need to check that as well.
 
sfsuphysics said:
So the basics are you add well above the amount of kalkwasser that will make the water saturated, and when the water is saturated the rest stays as a wet blob at the bottom of your reactor, in order to dose you pump freshwater into the reactor and that pushes out the saturated kalkwasser water into the tank, and some mixing device (stirring rod or pump) mixes the water so that the solution remains saturated because you have all that extra stuff at the bottom. So long story short, there are different types of reactors.

How much do you dose, depends upon what you want to do, if you want to use it primarily as a daily top off to help alkalinity and calcium levels you find out how much is necessary via a calculator, although there is a limit to this in that you can't dose more than your daily evaporation rate so if you have too many stony corals this will not work as a stand alone solution to do that. You can also use it as a way to pump up the pH of the tank, but regardless of what you use it for you should never dose a large amount all at once and call it a day, saturated kalkwasser solution has a pH of 12.4 so you will spike your pH pretty hard then come down so spacing it out into smaller dosing is definitely the preferred method.

Unfortunately there is no strict "tank this size, dose this much" type of calculation you can do. It will add calcium and alkalinity to the tank so you need to know what that consumption via testing, once you know that you can use any of the online calculators to tell you how much to add. "Tank volume X, current calcium Y, you want Z" and it'll say how much to add, so break that up through however many dosing amounts. pH increase on the other hand is way more tricky, and unfortunately there are too many variables to have a calculator to do so, so again dose what you think is good throughout the day, watch what your pH does, and call that the dosing amount, but do keep in mind you'll also be adding calcium and alkalinity regardless so you do need to check that as well.
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Thank you, very thoughtful answer. With regards to the amount, I asked the wrong question. I watched some videos about it and Mr Saltwater said he doses 4.5 gallons per day, which seems crazy (albeit it is a big tank). I guess I’m trying to get an idea as to how often I would have to replenish kalk.

Could this be accomplished by having a dosing head pulling from the ATO reservoir and feeding the reactor?

I’m looking to increase pH. Outside air into the skimmer doesn’t give me enough of a boost and my CO2 scrubber exhausts the media in a week.
 
Well Mr Saltwater has an absolutely huge tank, I'm unsure of the actual volume, I want to say something around 500 gallons, so huge tank means lots of evaporation per a day so adding a lot really isn't that much, plus kalkwasser really is not a good way to keep calcium and alkalinity up if you have a LOT of SPS (which I think he does), but it will help with the pH a bit, and does add a bit of calcium and alkalinity, so why not. But how often to replenish, I've heard every 2-3 weeks, but that depends largely on the purity of what you're using, more pure stuff can last much longer since there's more STUFF there, you may get a situation to replace when you see there's no more undissolved stuff at the bottom of your reactor. That said, to get 1 gallon of saturated kalk you need like 2 teaspoons of dry powder and 1 cup is ~48 teaspoons (24 gallons worth), someone like Mr Saltwater probably dumps in a few cups every few weeks, for a smaller tank obviously you wouldn't need to put in too much.

And absolutely yes, pulling from ATO to dose kalk is a way to go, although due to the way evaporation can change from day to day again, I wouldn't use the kalk as an ATO.

If you're trying to increase pH though, simply adding stuff to the tank is notoriously difficult since you're fighting against some normalized condition (even if that is a condition you don't want). If you're thinking of a reactor is an investment you want to make, there's a simply way to test it out, of course it requires you to have someway to consistently monitor pH (an Apex or something). But just mix up some kalkwasser in a container, find out how much you can add per day based off your alkalinity consumption and split that up over 12 hours, then set an alarm reminding you every hour to dose a certain amount (manually of course) see if that affects your pH in any noticeable way. I'm guessing though unless you have a large demand your pH won't change drastically much though with the additional of kalkwasser.
 
I did some kalk dosing and tried to push it to the amount my ATO was adding. I found it that I had to increase the dosage almost daily if I wanted to use it for my primary dosing.
It would raise the pH which increased alk consumption which increased kalk demand which increased pH.

I stopped because of a mixture of Omar always telling me it would bind PO4 and because I wanted to use 2 part for the primary alk supplement and didn’t have enough dosing heads for both 2 part and kalk.

Has anyone experienced weird phosphate levels after dosing kalk?
 
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