Testing Alan's tank....dam you lumpers!

[Canadian Man]

Just kidding on the dam part of course [img]smile.gif[/img]

Anyway I had a visit to Aj77's tank tonight and decided to take along my test kit's.
Well I got a cringe and a little hesitation when i walked throurgh the door.

Well aparently Alan's alk came out to be 3.2meq/l and calcium was 440. I wish my setup could be at these levels.I have been fighting to bring them up to this level with much dispare. LOL!

I just might give up ro/di water on my reef after all. All you lumpers win!

[Bob I]

I am beginning to feel vindicated.

[AJ_77]

I have to side with Bob - the day I run a "Reactor" is the day I dump it all and move to the Bahamas. ;) The simpler I can keep this, the better. Remember:

It's just a HOBBY, people!!! We're not running nuclear power to a 3rd-world country here...

:D ;) [img]tongue.gif[/img] ;) :D

[Delphinus]

Well, now now :D I want a reactor some day .... (hmmm, although, I too would like to move to the Bahamas ... why not have it both ways?? :D :D :D )

Jonathan, don't feel bad, I use tap water too and I have to manually dose to maintain decent Alk and Ca values. It's because you have a lot of stoneys. They do actively pull down the numbers. I find that I have to actively dose buffer to maintain my Alk at 3.7.

The two-part dosing can be a bit of a pain, but what I do like about it is that I can adjust one parameter over the other. I find that with the tap water, I only need to dose Ca at a fraction of what I dose for buffer. But I do have to dose Ca, even with the tap water, on my 75g, on account of the calcium-demanding inhabitants... With the Alk at 3.7 it doesn't take very long for the Ca to go from say 500ppm to 375ppm (I stopped dosing my Ca to see how long it would take, it only took about a week).

I admit to having a RO unit, but all I've used it on so far is my freshwater tank, and for myself :D

[Canadian Man]

Yes diffrent corals do suck up more stuff than others. i know.
so starting last night i am mixing my kalk with tap water, lets call it an experiment and see if it has any positive or negitive effects on my tank.

tony, the prob i have is if i raise my cal individually then my alk drops. the exact opposite happens the other way too. i suppose i have to fork out the dollars for a balanced a/b type additive to raise it.

[Tau2301]

I use a three part mix. About twice a week I use baking soda to raise my Alk, turbo calcium, and top up the tank with tap water mixed with ARGAmight. These three items are supposed to be synergestic.

Jon, you could try using the baking soda to raise your Alk. I thought I read on RC Chemistry that dosing Kalk kept Cal and Alk balanced?

[Delphinus]

Yes, that is correct. You cannot raise one too much without dropping down the other. I think of Alk as a measure of "the ability of calcium to precipitate." The higher it is, the more likely Ca will precipitate out, thus the tested value of Ca in the water column will drop.

Any of the a/b additives, tell you you cannot add them to the tank at the same time. One should be morning, the other evening. I use a little bucket to predissolve the stuff, one time I forget to completly rinse out my container between additions, so there was a little Ca residue when I mixed up the buffer. The reaction it made was pretty cool! Well, hot, actually, because it's definitely an exothermic reaction (the container felt like it was containing boiling water for a second!) It took me forever to chip out the calcium precipitate out of my little bucket.

I wouldn't use baking soda on its own for buffer. I forget the exact reasoning, but it's not complete, over long-term it will lead to ionic imbalance or something like that. What you need to do, is mix up 5 parts baking soda to one part washing soda (or something like that. You should be able to find the exact recipe on RC ... many people are doing this).

The reason people like the two part (or the a/b as you and others sometimes call it) is that you can zero in on one value and adjust that one independently, leaving the other one alone. Kalk and even Ca/Rx, you can't do it independently.

[Tau2301]

Thanks Tony, I will look for that mixture ratio on RC. By washing soda, you mean the brand name Borax? Think I remember from my childhood as a twenty-mule team - dating myself. :D

[Bob I]

I could not be more in agreement with Alan. The more I read about this dosing stuff, the less likely I am to do it. If I cannot keep stonies, then I wont have stonies. There are a lot of softies I don't have room for. Thus softies it is. :D :D

[Delphinus]

Don't get me wrong, Bob and Alan, you guys are totally correct too. Whatever feels right for you, is what you should go with.

And, I should mention, just because a person doesn't dose this or that doesn't mean they can't keep stonies. Only if you want to actively promote growing them at optimal rates, then you need to pay more attention to some of the more subtle details. I've never dosed anything in my 50g and the purple acro grows like a weed anyways. So, just because something is a stoney, doesn't mean it's a fuss-pot. [img]smile.gif[/img]

...

Speaking of Bob and Alan -- are you guys going to make arrangements with me to get your mysis?? My wife wants the stuff out of her freezer ... ;)

[ 10 June 2002, 10:48: Message edited by: delphinus ]