Please advise: dKH 12.8 Ca450 pH8.2-3

[Anonymous]

My alk is consistently holding at 12.8dKH. I've been adding just the calcium buffer part of B-ionic in an effort to drop the alkalinity a little. Unfortunately, I don't understand chemistry well enough to really know what I'm doing.

Basically, I just want to match natural seawater parameters. Could someone give some some thoughts about how to lower my alk to a respectable level of hardness?

I'm planning on dripping kalk at night in an effort to ween myself off of B-Ionic and also to reduce phospates. However, part of my phosphate (reads hair algea outbreak) is probably overfeeding. Maybe I should hold off on the kalk until I get my alk down. I don't know.

Actually, I got my first can of Kalkwasser tonight. I've got some mixed up in a gallon of RO water sitting out in the garage. QUESTION: How long should I let it sit before I pour some in my IV bag? It's in one of those clear, textured milk jugs and it's really hard to see through. Maybe I should just use a sterilized 2Liter bottle instead? What do you use?

TIA,
po

 

[aquarist=broke]

I'm using the same deal as you. I mix say three jugs of kalkwater and drip about a gallon a day. It takes about three hours to add a gallon by dripping for make-up water. It really keeps the hair algae at bay. The Kent marine kind says 1/2 teaspoon minimum to 2 teaspoons max. I usually use one teaspoon, and calcium stays at about 400-450.(Using Red Sea fishpharm test kit)
Kent also recommends not more than one weeks worth at a time. I haven't had any bad things happen yet.
The bonus is that if I slack off and don't mix some, I can just use RO water for the day or two that I am slacking, since it usually settles out overnight.
The bad thing that I have noticed, is that whenever I move the gallon jug, the bottom precipitate gets stirred up.

 

[Anonymous]

You know how sometimes you'll lose your car keys or sunglasses or something and you'll search and search for them. Then you finally ask somebody if they've seen them and that's when they turn up?

I think I found my answer in a Randy-Holmes Farley article. He shows some balanced Ca-Alk readings. My readings line up with one of the examples. Man oh man I wish that I'd gained more than a passing familiarity with chemistry in school. I still don't really understand the chemical relationship but I'm going to go ahead and start dripping a quart of Kalk in tonight.

 

[Anonymous]

Well, now it's obvious what a slow typer I am. By the time I sent my second post, you'd already responded.

It's good to hear that kalk is helping you with your hair algea. I'm hoping it will do me some good too. I'm also prone to slacking off for a few days so I think this method will work well for me too for that reason. Thanks for the tip about disturbing the sediments at the bottom of the milk jug. I'll use my Zen-Fu Slow Hand of Mindfulness.

po

 

[aquarist=broke]

WAIT!

I don't know the answer to your chemistry part of your problem.

I should also recommend a really big water change after a major hand pruning. My tank was really overrun with hair algae, and I changed about 70% if the water, after a major hand pruning and a bit of sandbed stiring, see this post:http://reefs.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=18425

That was a headache. I believe that what's causing our hair problem is pictured in this thread:
http://reefs.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=18449&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=
This dark colored water is definately food, crap, and anything that hair algae loves to eat.

Please, at least, for now wait until someone like the site adms. or even Hipman. I don't want your animals to die.(even though mine haven't really had problems)

 

[aquarist=broke]

here is a before and after pic of one rock.
I can pull up the whole tank pic if you so desire.

 

[Anonymous]

My hair algea looks similiar to the 'before' picture. I've hand pruned off the LR and done a series of small (5-10gallon) water changes. I've also stopped feeding so heavily and shortened my photoperiod. My problem though, is that I've got gobs of hair algea in between polyps and overtaking my porite coral. So it's been impossible to hand prune in those spots effectively.

Thanks for the hold up. But i'm just going to do a quart tonight and then I'll test tomorrow and see what happened. Oh, and the previous water changes did help bring my alk down. Around the first of this month I was getting a reading of 15dKH. It's embarrasing how I'll slack on the important things while spending time on stupid stuff like looking at skimmate under a microscope and checking pricelists for future DIY acrylic and lighting upgrade projects.

po

 

[aquarist=broke]

As soon as I get some spending money, a microscope is going to be my next purchase. Boy I bet there is all kinds of cool things to look at under the lens...

 

[Anonymous]

Aw man it's great. I found some little guys (parameciums?) swimming around. They'd go from one green glob to the next and sometimes they'd run into each other. I imagined they were communicating but I'm the kind of guy who can get lost in his head from watching an ant hill.

Oh and I put a drop of Kent's Phytoplex under the scope and felt pretty good about how many green blobs I saw across the glass. When compared to the sample that Matt put on the board, I wasn't expecting to see so many. I even tried to set my camera up on a tripod and take a couple of photos but they wouldn't really take too well.

Well, I let that kalk settle for three hours. I've got it dosing now at 15seconds per drip. I only mixed one teaspoon of TwoLittleFishies up with a gallon of RO water. And I'm only using one IV bags worth, so I don't think I'm in any danger of hurting my tank.

I appreciate your posts,
po

 

[Anonymous]

My alk is consistently holding at 12.8dKH. I've been adding just the calcium buffer part of B-ionic in an effort to drop the alkalinity a little. Unfortunately, I don't understand chemistry well enough to really know what I'm doing.

Basically, I just want to match natural seawater parameters. Could someone give some some thoughts about how to lower my alk to a respectable level of hardness?

I'm planning on dripping kalk at night in an effort to ween myself off of B-Ionic and also to reduce phospates. However, part of my phosphate (reads hair algea outbreak) is probably overfeeding. Maybe I should hold off on the kalk until I get my alk down. I don't know.

Actually, I got my first can of Kalkwasser tonight. I've got some mixed up in a gallon of RO water sitting out in the garage. QUESTION: How long should I let it sit before I pour some in my IV bag? It's in one of those clear, textured milk jugs and it's really hard to see through. Maybe I should just use a sterilized 2Liter bottle instead? What do you use?

TIA,
po

po- at your present levels, your not that far off-imho, if you just do nothing for about a week,your alk should be fine when your Ca level hits about 400-(the alk will drop along with the Ca)-adding Ca is not the answer, it's the uptake of Ca by your system, along with the corresponding alk needed by the critters that will do the best job of lowering it.when your alk hits the target-THEN correct the Ca, and start using the kalkvasser-imho

luck

 

[Mac1]

Ditto What Vitz said - I got myself into a lot of trouble that way. As it says on the bottle, B-Ionic is meant to be Dosed in EQUAL PARTS A and B supplements. Doing anything else, will really throw your system out of whack! It's a hard thing to track down too, and the only way to fix it, is large water changes IME.

Think of your Calcium and Alk. as opposite ends of a See-Saw... When they are both in balance, the see-saw is balanced (both seats equal distance off the ground). When one goes too high, the other one will fall. Right now your Alk is around 12, and Ca at 450... well 450 Ca is where you're shooting for, but w/ a High alk... that tells me the Alk end of your See-Saw is higher off the ground than the Ca end... At 450 Ca., your Alk should be around 8 dKH to be balanced. If you wanted to have an Alk of 12 (which I've been running for some time now w/o any noticeable ill effects), your calcium should be up around 550-600 (just barely shy of precipitating), to be balanced. You see, in addition to either end of the See-Saw moving closer/further away from the ground, you can also raise and/or lower the Fulcrum point... So you can have an Alk of 12, and keep "Balanced" by having a Ca. elevated as well, in effect moving the fulcrum point of our example further away (but still in balance). You can have an Alk of 4, and a Ca. of 250, and be balanced too (but the fulcrum is closer to the ground in this instance). That being said, if you try and go too high, it all comes tumbling down (and you get a cemented Sandbed and white 'snow' all over the place).
Hard to understand w/o knowing a lot about chemistry, and lord knows I don't. But this example someone else gave me helped me to better understand the relationship between the two.

- Mac

 

[SPC]

Excellent analogy Mac. I also agree that water changes are the best way to get levels back to normal and that adding the calcium only of B-Ionic at this point will only make the situation worse.
Steve

 

[Anonymous]

That's good advice Vitz. I appreciate it and will do just what you suggested. After adding the IV bags worth of kalk, I did some tests and there were no noticable changes. So parameters are ok. Now it's just a waiting game until I start dosing.

Mac- good analogy! gave me a very clear mental image of this confusing chemistry. So what I'm going to do now is refrain from adding chemicals until the fulcrum naturally lowers to the point where my dKH reading is lower. And then I'll bump my calcium seat up a little higher. That's when I'll resume dosing B-Ionic to raise my fulcrum and then try to keep it there by dosing kalk.

Thanks for weighing in Steve. Definitely no more one-part dosing with B-ionic.

po

 

[Mac1]

And FWIW, this actually came up on another discussion I was having..., think of pH as the fulcrum. Kinda helps figure out where it all fits in.

- Mac

 

[dizzy]

I'm using the same deal as you. I mix say three jugs of kalkwater and drip about a gallon a day. It takes about three hours to add a gallon by dripping for make-up water. It really keeps the hair algae at bay. The Kent marine kind says 1/2 teaspoon minimum to 2 teaspoons max. I usually use one teaspoon, and calcium stays at about 400-450.(Using Red Sea fishpharm test kit)
Kent also recommends not more than one weeks worth at a time. I haven't had any bad things happen yet.
The bonus is that if I slack off and don't mix some, I can just use RO water for the day or two that I am slacking, since it usually settles out overnight.
The bad thing that I have noticed, is that whenever I move the gallon jug, the bottom precipitate gets stirred up.

aquarist=broke I was wondering if you could slow your drip rate down any? I think a gallon in 8-hours would be better if it will drip that slowly. Also it says 1/8 minimum to 2 teaspoons maximum, but I agree with about 1 teaspoon. I was just rereading the section on kalkwasser in "The Reef Aquarium" by Delbeek and Sprung. They recommend mixing small amounts (only enough for a day or two) It is also recommended to rinse the container frequently as opposed to adding new water and kalk to the calcium carbonate that remains in the dripper. It is best to encourage evaporation and to replace all the water with "limewater". If you use straight RO be sure to buffer up the PH to around 8.