One Month Calcium Hydroxide Test

[SNT]

Ok, after talking with alex, i have decided to try out a batch of calcium hydroxide that i got from a fish store. i will try thins for about a month to see if there is any real difference with growth. i will be posting update and pics of a SPS that i am monitoring as i dose this. Does anyone out there uses this stuff and have any comments/suggestions on it?

 

[washingtond]

I would suggest that you post your PH, Ca, & Alk levels and the test kit used with each picture. Coral growth has many variables and these are just a few. The question that I have is how do you know that any growth that you see is a result of adding calcium hydroxide? What do you normally add to your tank to maintain calcium & alkalinity levels and what was the growth rate before?

This should be interesting.

 

[Serk]

@SNT wrote:

I use food grade Calcium Hydroxide as my only means of calcium/alk supplementation in my system...

 

[Alex]

@Serk wrote:

I use food grade Calcium Hydroxide as my only means of calcium/alk supplementation in my system..."]
serk, I'm also interested in the Calcium Hydroxide additive and I'm thinking of switching from the 2 part solution dosing. I came across this article from Mike Palleta and it was most educating to me. So now I'm torn. Although the 2-part dosing is too much work, it seems to be the "safest" option of all.
http://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?cls=16&cat=1988&articleid=2999

Can you please answer a few questions?
1) How do you dose it? Do you have a kalkwasser reactor running thru your auto-top off? If not at what rate do you dose? (Drops per sec)
2) If you use a reactor, which one and how often to you refill the reactor with Kalk? Is it weeks, months (I hope not daily)?
3) What is your evaporation rate?
4) Do you dose 24/7? If not do you have big PH swings between morning and night?
5) How stable are your Ca and Alk reading?
6) What values are you being able to maintain with only the Kalk dosing?
7) Do you have a lot of SPS? (Hi Calcium requirement)
8 - Do you ever have to add buffer? According to the article, one should.
9) How often do you test your water? Is it required to test the water often? I test mine once a month.

Did I forget anything?

I'm thinking of starting to dose Kalk in addition to the 2-part and without running it thru the auto-top off. I'm hoping that the daily dosing rate would be lower than my evaporation rate.

Sorry to burden you with all these questions. I jumped on your post as I 'd like to hear from somebody that's using only Kalk first hand.

I'm currently making the 2 part additives once every two months but lately my calcium requirements increased (I added a few more SPS) and my Ca / Alk numbers went out of whack, so I'm going thru the 2-part a lot faster now than before.

So it's either switching to something else (Calcium reactor / /Kalk) or ask Marc to make me bigger containers to store the 2-part additives...

 

[bimmerzs]

And don't forget an added benefit......kalkwasser precipitates phosphates out of your system water.

Cheers,

 

[Serk]

@Alex wrote:

1. I use a Kalkwasser Reactor, and all of my top off runs through it.
2. I have a Reef Mania KR150. My choice was heavily influenced by the fact that I won it in the raffle at MACNA Houston. :wink: I generally have to add 2 cups of calcium hydroxide every month or so...
3. Pre-ATO my evaporation was 8-10 gallons a day, and has only gone up I'm sure, as I've added another 75 gallons or so of volume since I last manually topped off. (I've got 8+ fans blowing directly across the surface of the water in a 300 gallon total volume system).
4. ATO isn't time locked, but I have toyed with the idea of only allowing the ATO to run during lights out to boost the pH then. To see what my pH has done over any time period over the last year or so, click on my signature, and you can graph my pH, ORP and temperature to your heart's content... Short version, over the last 7 days the lowest pH reading has been 7.95 and the highest has been 8.39...
5. They're fairly stable, but I'll admit I don't test nearly as much as I used to. I test maybe once a quarter, or every other month these days. For the readings on Alk and CA that I've taken over the last year plus, click here:

http://tinyurl.com/36uc5l

6. Since I put the kalkreactor online, my CA has ranged from 385 to 470 and my ALK from 7.7 to 11.2... However, don't take these readings as gospel, I'm notoriously bad at getting accurate readings from test kits. Also, I was really bad about not refilling the kalk reactor in a timely manner for a while there...
7. I used to have quite a bit of SPS, but most of my favorite pieces died while I was out of country for a month and my tank took a bit of a dive. I do still have several LARGE Montipora Capricornis colonies that are growing fast and thick, and a few smaller SPS colonies that have hung on. I also get thick coraline algae. (In all honesty, the speed at which coraline covers the glass in my tank is my calcium testing)
8. I've never added any buffer per se. The closest was BEFORE I had a controller, and took out 10+ gallons of water while pruning algae, then going to run errands, and the ATO ran for hours dumping 10+ gallons of kalk into the tank. I got home, and the tank was white, with a pH of 9.8... I put a few 100 cc of vinegar into the tank, and that dropped it back down to a normal range in minutes.
9. As stated above, I test only every couple of months lately...

I will state, if you are to use a kalkreactor as your ATO, I can't emphasize enough the importance of having it connected to a pH controller!!!

I sketched out a VERY crude diagram of my ATO/Kalkreactor setup in this thread:

http://www.dfwmas.org/Forums/viewtopic.php?t=39889

 

[Alex]

Brian, thanks for taking the time to answer my questions.

I think I 'm going to wait a bit longer with the 2-part dosing, to see if I can stabilize my numbers before I switch to the Kalk.

But I have decided if and when I start with Kalk, it will not be connected thru the top off. It will be dosed independently more than likely thru a kalk reactor and with a solenoid on the input that will shutt off, if the PH goes above 8.4

But first I need to find me a kalk reactor that will hold at least a month or two of kalk as my main goal is to minimize maintenance.

That's the plan for now anyways.