Dosing Question

[bckane]

I want tot start dosing Kalkwasser.....many people suggest dosing at night 12 hours for the Ph swing.......Ive check my Ph day and night seems to be pretty stable........I also checked several time Im topping off 0.875 gals per night....I know you have to dose slow so my question is if I dose 0.875 gallons in 24 hours.....would be a lot slower the dosing 0.875 gallons in 12 hours........does this make sense

 

[steve-s]

You can dose kalk 24/7 if needed be but that is the main point, how much need there is. Since the pH is stable (what is the level BTW?), you need to look at the rate of depletion for alkalinity and Ca. These are your two biggest factors in using this kind of product.

Rate of depletion (what the tank uses in a given day) will help determine how much kalk/water volume to dose, ie 1 tspn per gal vs 2 tspn/gal and how many times/week is beneficial to maintain a steady chemistry level. 24/7, once a day, every other day and so on.

What do you currently use to maintain chemistry and what is in the tank to use it up?

Cheers
Steve

 

[bckane]

Now Im dosing B-Ionic.......every day..........
Cal 420
Alk 9dkh
If I dont dose for a week my Cal goes down to 380 and the Alk around 7

Im just trying to get away from the 2 part dosing

 

[steve-s]

Now Im dosing B-Ionic.......every day......

In what quantity? In may give some insight for the kalk additions.

Dosing either a two part or kalk is just fine, no concern there. Your depletion rate does not seem all that high and is kinda unbalanced (2.8 DKH/20 ppm Ca), the kalk should work just fine. You just need to keep an eye on your Ca as the demand there is higher than the alk. I would suggest a good dry CaCl additive as a companion additive once the part A of your liquid runs out. You will most likely need to tweek the numbers weekly. Personally I prefer Kent Turbo Ca as it will not impact alkalinity much if at all.

Now your going to have to do a bit of trial and error here so you will need to let the levels fall so there is a marging of safety. Start with ¼ teaspoon of kalk in your normal amount of evap top off water. Allow the kalk to dissolve and settle for a minimum of 6 hours before dripping. Be sure you test alk, Ca and pH before the kalk addition and the test the numbers again the next moring once done. Try dripping after lights out at a rate of 1-2 drops/second.

See what the net change was if any. If there change was significant, decrease the kalk by ½, if there was little or no change, this would put you in the area of "maintaining" the levels which is ideally what you want. You don't want to keep needing to alter the numbers but keep them at a steady pace. Repeat the addition over a couple of days and keep testing to see if there is an increase/decrease or no change. Chemistry serves the tank inhabitants best when is maintained rather than constantly in need of correction. Keep in mind as well that the saturation point of the kalk is 2 teaspoons/gal of RO water so any more than that would be a waste. The use of vnegar can help increase the dissolution of lime solids if you need to get more out of the 2 teaspoons. I seriously doubt you will need more than a teaspoon of kalk/week so it's a matter of dividing that up to help maintain the numbers.

More than likely being ¼ tspn kalk to 1 gal of water dripped every other day.

Cheers
Steve

 

[bckane]

Thanks Steve-s