[shaywood]

I've been working hard lately to increase my calcium using my calcium reactor. My Ca level is at 420, tank PH is at 7.9, but my dKH has dropped to around 6. I useKalk drip with top off as needed. Is there something different to increase the dKH? I thought increasing the PH with the kalkwasser drip would also increase the dKH?

[returnofsid]

Try these links.

The first is to a GREAT DIY recipe for supplements for Ca, Alk and Mg. All of the ingredients are very easy to locate at your local grocery store, hardware store, or I got all of mine at Walmart.

An Improved Do-it-Yourself Two-Part Calcium and Alkalinity Supplement System by Randy Holmes-Farley - Reefkeeping.com

The second link is to a great and very useful reef chemistry calculator that will help you determine how much Ca, Alk or Mg supplement to use (there's a lot of supplement options on the calculator). You input your water quantity, current parameters, goal parameters, supplement you're using...and then you can do two things.

1. you can click on the graph to the right, which will show you how close you are currently to NSW and to your goal parameters.

2. You can click on either "Submit Ca," "Submit Alk," or "Submit Mg" and it'll take you to a page that tells you exactly how much supplement to add.

'Reef Chemistry Calculator FV'

Using these 2 links helped me get my tanks balanced very quickly and to keep them pretty close to balanced.

I'd stop dosing Kalk until you get your tank balanced. Kalk will just put you further from being balanced. Kalk works great WHEN you're balanced...but not so great until you are. Same with the Ca reactor.

[weez1959]

Yup, the 2 part recipe works great and costs peanuts, the hardest part is finding the Calcium.
While you're on the topic of the 2 part recipe, I have a question about the Magnesium part, he says to dump in 2.5 cups everytime you're finished using 1 gallon of the 2 parts but he doesn't mention what size tank 2.5 cups is for. Is this for a 10 gallon or a 200 gallon, did I miss something?
Sorry about butting in on you Shaywood but I figured if you decide to try this, my question will help you too...

[returnofsid]

I don't go by that rule. I use the Reef Chemistry Calculator to determine how much to add.

[shaywood]

Thanks for all the great input!

[showfish]

I'm not to sure about the calcium chloride over the long haul. I have heard that using calcium chloride for long periods of time is not good for your water chemistry. Over a period of a year the tank can build up chloride ions that can damage the ionic balance of the tank, and there is no way to rid the tank of these chloride ions other than water changes. I think it might be a good idea to do regular water changes with using this method of calcium and alk dosing. I do use calcium chloride to bring my Ca levels up to par, but then once at the level I'm shooting for then I use calcium hydroxide to maintain my levels based on my daily calcium consumption. Any thoughts on this?

[returnofsid]

Once balanced, I use Kalk to keep my levels up. I still need to supplement Alk and Ca on occassion. In our tanks, we should be doing regular water changes all the time anyway. Those water changes will help with any problems the calcium chloride would cause over long use.