chem 101

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mfrei64

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Jul 29, 2004
Messages
46
Location
Elk Grove, CA
I've read some posts about using lime in your reef as a calcium supplement. Have any of you had experience with this? How do you dose it? Is it just trial and error and contiuous testing?

Also, I've heard there are cheap ways to keep your pH up? (soda ash???) Any suggestions? How do you dose this?

Or should I just bite the bullet and get the Ca reactor?

Thanks!!!
 
I"m too much of a noob to really help directly, but I can suggest you use the search feature on the forum, and look up calcium, and kalk
Kalk is the 'simple' way to dose calcium in the tank. you basically start with a slow drip and lots of Ca testing. eventually you'll get it tweaked so it drips your kalk mix at the right rate to keep calcium at good stable levels.

as for pH...I don't think soda ash is right. you can use baking soda though, which increases carbonate hardness (alkalinity) which has a direct affect on pH (as well as buffering the water).

Are you having pH problems? If so, the guys here will need your pH, Alkalinity and Calcium levels to help.
 
I wouldn't say I'm having problems, other than I have to continuously add buffer to keep the pH at 8.3.......also, I've been adding calcium supplements, but the stuff is expensive at the pet shop, and that wasn't a big problem in the past, but I now have a 300 gal.........and at this point, don't want to drop another 500-600 for a reactor.
 
yeah, an alk reading, plus calcium lvl would be interesting.
I had problems in my tank using tap water, which was about 8dKH, and pH of 7.8 (rested). After adding salt, my pH was only 7.9, but my alk and Ca levels were high. I'm told this has to do with magnesium lvls in my tap water (which I don't know the levels of).
switching to R/O seems to have fixed the problem completely.
 
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