Baking Soda and Kalk dosing help

[PrettyFishies]

I'm using baked baking soda to maintain my alk with a dosing pump.

I need help in determining how much baking soda I need to mix with a gallon of water for my 130gallons of volume.

I lose about 10ppm per day. So the other calc is how much to add.

Then I need to add Kalk to maintain calcium which seems to lose about 15ppm per day but I'm still testing to figure that out. I have a tunze osmalator top off with a pump and feel that's going to ruin the pump over time - or should I not worry about that? I use about 2 gallons of top off a day.

 

[Jimbo C]

Google reef chemistry calculator and there is a calculator that will help you. Just plug in your system volume, current alk, and desired alk. Oh yeah and your recipe. Bam, your dose gets figured out.

 

[jeffaquarius]

Kalkwasser would raise both alk and cal at the same time. It is a "2 birds in 1 shot". I would not dose baking soda once I dose with kalk. I dose only with non baked baking soda to raise alk and dose with cal separately. That way you can easily control the amount of dose for each. My 60 gal reef tank consumes about 1 gal per day of ro/di with a mixture of 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda in my ato. Then I add cal if necessary to maintain it.

 

[PrettyFishies]

How long does the kalk mix last? Doesn't it lose potency rather fast?

 

[Gregcoyote]

I found kalkwasser works better than calcium chloride. Both will raise or maintain calcium levels, but the kalkwasser seems to make calcium that my corals respond to better. Don't know why, just a observation.

 

[PrettyFishies]

I added to my top off. Should I keep the PH running or just let the excess settle at the bottom?

 

[jeffaquarius]

The kalkwasser powder should not be directly mixed with your your ro/di ato. It should be prepared in a separate container. The precipitation that settles down at the bottom are waste and should be thrown out.

 

[Gregcoyote]

You need to read up on it first. It must be added over hours as it will cause a ph spike if added quickly. The clear liquid is called limewater and it can be added to a ATO or dripped in at night when PH is lowest.