Did my tank crash! Help!
 

So woke up this morning to my tank looking like this http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/06/09/3atuhyse.jpg
O local reefer told me to add kalkwasser to my ato and sand that's how he's been running for years so I gave it a try and now this? Is my tank pouched? Should I start doing water changes right away?

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I don't even know what that is!! Does it blow off? But ya, do a large water change. Can't hurt.

I had to drive the wife to work so I didn't get a chance to mess around with it. I'm going to have to get some salt water made cuz I just did a water change yesterday. Either going to get a dosing system for my kalkwasser, or selling the tank I don't think I can handle a crash, and my wife won't let me spend all that money again if it is :-(

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Pretty much anything with algae is cover in the stuff, my rocks and over flow, some of my coral looks unaffected, like my brain, torch, hammer, flow pot, and birds nest, frogs pawn

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If that is just algae covered in stuff (kalk, Ca, etc) you have other issues too :) Blow it off, suck it out, change some water. Don't dump kalk into your tank at anything other than a drip feed or via reactor.
Then figure out where the nutrients are coming from to feed all that algae

Where did you get the Kalk? And how much did you use in how much water?

Or like brad said lol

I got the tank used a a few weeks ago and was looking a little rough when I picked it up, had lots of hair and cyano. So I've been doing water changes to bring and down and it's been working.
And yeah I should have done a lot more but I trusted he knew what he was telling me cuz his tanks are beautiful. I could have misunderstand what he said to so I'm not going to just through him under the bus. I got the kalkwasser from jl it's the bigger container they sell. I had around 12 tbsp in 13 gallons of ro/di and was thrown in over night with my ato

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Your ato fills 13g of water overnight or 1.3. if so then there's your issue along another of why so much water , also 1 Tsp per gallon is the Starting dose not tbsp and make sure your ato isn't dosing too much at a time or besides what you got visibly you could get get ph spikes as well.

If your going to run Kalk make sure your dosing any other cal/Alk supplement and test your water for a while to make sure it's doing it's job or isn't.

There 13g of total water in my ato, i looked and I think it added 2 gallon over night. Must have been 1 tsp I just used what the directions said. My ato usually fills for ten seconds or so the turns off for a bit then goes back on.

Do you mean not dosing other supplements or should I be dosing things with my kalkwasser?

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To me, that looks like calcium carbonate precipitate to me on top of algae. If that's the case, you can use a turkey baster to blow it off. Test calcium, alkalinity, and magnesium as precipitation can seriously deplete them. Maybe a better pic??

I'll get some tests and pics when I can get away from work, for some reason they don't think my fish tank problems are reason to not be at work

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Tell them your dog needs to go to the vet. "They" never understand fish tanks because they are just picturing some cesspool 10-gallon tank with guppies. :twised:

What I mean is Kalk is a calcium and alkalinity additive so if your dosing or adding any other types of calcium or alkalinity then your dosing more then what the Kalk directions tell you. If you want to run Kalk make sure your not adding any other types of calcium or alkalinity to the system.

Start slow And test you won't go wrong

K that's what I thought you meant. At the moment the kalk is the only extra thing I'm adding to the tank

I don't dose Kalk, but from what I had read, are you not suppose to mix the solution, let it settle and then only use the solution on top and not what precipitates to the bottom?

From your post it sounded like you put in everything. If I remember right, I think that would cause you calcium to precipitate out.

I mixed it let it settle and had the pump go on later but it feel of my stand and sat on the bottom and grabbed the gunk that was there, or so I'm guessing. Hopefully the damage isn't to bad

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Well for anyone wondering turns out I need some cooking lessons, used table spoon instead of teaspoon, lucky everything is looking normal again and I drained the kalk out. Did a water test and every parameter was pretty good. Did a water change and today all is back to normal!

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kalk must be consistently stirred to not allow the sediment to hit the bottom. If you do use an ATO to dose, make sure the pump is in the middle of the waterline, as to not suck up the bottom of the reservoir - if you dump the entire contents of your ATO sludge at the bottom into your tank, this is what you will get. But there are also dangers in this, as it is highly concentrated, you may see a large alk/pH swing, and that's what you should watch out for.

test pH/alk/Ca, regardless of your waterchange.

I would suggest not dosing Kalk unless you need to! You're levels are normally sustained well just by doing regular water changes. Depending on your coral load, you probably won't need it.

Yeah I made a pvc stand so it doesn't sit on the bottom. I did check after the water change and all tested good

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