[Caesar Augustus]

I have a gallon Jug set up dripping calcium hydroxide at a very slow rate but I was wondering how slow to drip it. How many days should it take to fully drain in to the 55 and keep levels safe? I could continue to tinker around but I figure that one of you has this down to a science. I've already had an accident (drip was too fast) and in cost me my favorite clown. As of right now it takes about a week(4-5 days) to slowly drip in, is that about right? Thanks for any info.
Keep the Faith,
Augustus

[kevinpo]

The drip should match the amount of water you are evaporating. Also you should be testing your calcium and alkalinity levels. Natural Sea Water (NSW) is about 400 ppm of calcium and 2.8 meq/L of alkalinity. Many reefkeppers of stoney corals keep those numbers slightly higher in hopes of faster growth . I keep my tanks in the 420 ppm and 3.0-3.2 range.

HTH,
Kevin

[Northman_with_reef]

b4 I got my float valve I used to drip about 50 per minute.

I think its very strange that your clown died, my tank has had pH 9
sometimes and I've never lost anything.

Your only siphoning out the clear fluid, right?

[scubadude]

Im doing this in some of my larger systems and there is pro and con to dripping fast versus slow. The good thing about dripping hydrated lime mixed in FW right after you mix up the ingredients is that you will get a higher resolution thus affecting your ca and alk levels better if you have high CA demands but the downfall of that is that you must watch your PH so you dont add to much at one time and offset your PH more than .2 in a 24 hr period. The good thing about dripping it slow is you give the mix a longer saturation time which allows the yuckies to precipitate out of the mix. Its like Kevin said you should match your evaporation levels, the trick is finding out how much of the lime you add and how often. You cant go by others rates because chances are you have different calcium needs then they do so there is no magical 1tsp per gallon ratio if that is what you are looking for you will have to fine tune your needs and setup a consistent dosage according to your inhabitants that deprive your CA, which will change if you add/remove the CA depriving inhabitants . HTH

[Caesar Augustus]

Thanks guys, looks like I'm off for a calcium test kit I don't know exactly what happened to the clown but the whole gallon of Kalk was in overnight and he was dead as well as the corals in the tank being really unhappy for about 5 days. All seems to be well now but I'm trying to get an algae explosion (hair)under control.
Augustus