DIY Kalkwasser Doser

[justonemoretank]

Sorry everyone ... the link above is not working because there is not a space at the end before the word "If"

 

[justonemoretank]

CameronYes you can tweak the amount of Calcium and Alk that you are putting in to the system somewhat. If your Calcium and Alkalinity demands are less than what fully saturated lime water makeup is giving you then just mix less pickling lime powder in the container of RODI water. I think that fully saturated is about 2 teaspoons per gallon and should have a pH of 12+ (check the article that I tried to post the address to but I cannot edit the word if off the end of the address) If you want more Calcium and Alk then you can add Vinegar to the RODI water and this will allow you to add more Kalk powder to the solution. If you need more Calcium still then you need to add Calcium Chloride or a Calcium reactor. Sorry. But this little system should help everyone meet at least some if not all of their tanks Calcium and Alkalinity demand. Hope this helps everyone.

 

[cameron]

I should have thought about vinegar to dissovle the kalk better. The tank I inherited uses a crazy amount of calcium for its size. I am dosing the max Seachem Calcium recommends right now and it isn't keeping up. The guy before me had a huge bucket to dose kalkwasser, but it doesn't work in my setup so I have been looking for something better that didn't cost an arm and a leg. This is just what I was looking for but wanted to see the "trick" for juicing more calcium if I need it.

Any thoughts on using this setup with a two part solution?

 

[justonemoretank]

Sure you could... just buy two big jugs of the two part (or better yet you could make some two part yourself Randy Holmes Farley has two recipes on the web). Then use some sort of pump on a timer (like that AquaLifter pump that Sammy is using) you will need two pumps and two timers working seperately. I would recommend dosing it into the sump of course and at alternating times. You are going to want to watch it carefully at least for a month to make sure that you are dosing equal amounts of each into your system. You must have some really good growth if your demand is really high. I wanna see some pictures!

 

[cameron]

I have some test batches of his formula and I have a LiterMeter with one pump. I am thinking about picking up another pump for it and going that route, but I haven't gotten that far yet. For now, I am going to try your design with kalkwasser and see how that goes first.

You can see some of the pics at these galleries

http://www.cameroncole.com/cgi-bin/imageGal.cgi?direct=2007-01_Aquarium_28th_Night">http://www.cameroncole.com/cgi-bin/imageGal.cgi?direct=2007-01_Aquarium_28th_Night</a>

[IMG]http://www.cameroncole.com/cgi-bin/imageGal.cgi?direct=2007-01_Aquarium_29th">http://www.cameroncole.com/cgi-bin/imageGal.cgi?direct=2007-01_Aquarium_29th</a>

[IMG]http://www.cameroncole.com/cgi-bin/imageGal.cgi?action=view&link=2007-02_Aquarium_03rd&image=HPIM2685.JPG&img=&tt">http://www.cameroncole.com/cgi-bin/imageGal.cgi?action=view&link=2007-02_Aquarium_03rd&image=HPIM2685.JPG&img=&tt</a>=

I am fighting some diatoms right now, but I hope that is just the tank still breaking in.