For those of you using kalkwasser, how are things looking? I am up to 15 tsp for my 10 gallon vat, or 1.5 tsp per gallon of make up water. But my calcium was still going down and starting to run around 380. I have noticed that since winter passed my exaporation rate has slowed. I guess the low humidity air of winter makes it easier to exaporate water. I could have made my kalk solution a bit stronger but instead I decided to add a small fan that blows into my sump, it is on the same timer as my lights. I did this to increase the evaporation rate and the added benefit is that it keeps my temp swings right at one degree. So far so good, calcium is around 410 and Alk is around 9.5, both steady.
I've been considering a dehumidifier to help lower the humidity in the house and thus promote more evaporation. I also need to get my fans installed on the back of my canopy.
If you needed to get more benefit from your Kalk, you should look into some of the articles about adding vinegar to the mix to disolve more calk into the water. There are a few articles out there about it, but remember that kalk is limited by the evaporation like you have learned, and you may consider a calcium reactor. You can increase evaporation, but remember you need to do something about the humidity in the air resulting from that. The reccomendation of a dehumidifier has a double benefit in this situation, it will keep the air drier to allow for more evaporation, and it will take that water that evaporates and pull it out of the air.
I was using Kalk for about 6 months after attending MACNA last year only because Jim Griffin who went with us told me how easy it would be to add Kalk to my make water system as I had it configured. It was very easy to do but now that I found the guy that sell the quality CO2 setup and have it running I stopped using the Kalk. My Ca levels are quite high, in excess of 500 but I enjoyed very high alkalinity levels while using the kalk which have since dropped some. This reminds me that I need to do another battery of measurment values. I pledged this year to be more dilegent at keeping track, I am currently tracking temp,ph,ca,alkalinity, salinity and PAR on a monthly basis.
If you back off on the calcium reactor a little you can still use Kalk. You can then have the higher Alk and better protien skimming.
My Kalk is working well, 1.5 tsp per gallon seems to be the right amount, although I am still fine tuning. Since I got my aquacontroller I have been able to use it to control my heaters and a fan. I have changed my temp swing from 4 degrees to 1, I think unknowingly one of my heaters never turned off. A good reason to use two small ones instead of 1 big one. The decrease in evap rate this caused is what pushed me to 1.5 tsp.
I can see it is going to be an interesting process by relying on evaporation like this. Since evaporation rates will constantly change the amount of kalk making into the tank will also constantly change. I am guessing that it will all work out OK in the end but I don't see how a person could have a serious SPS tank using kalk topoff as the sole source of Ca addition. Not that I am shooting for a serious SPS tank, just an observation. I went ahead and bumped my kalk up to 2 tsp per gallon as my Ca level had gone back to the 380 level. I will see what this does for me. My goal is to have kalk be my only additive for Ca/Alk maint. James
The way others I have read about do a "Serious" SPS tank using kalk top off is combining a kalk stirrer, CO2 solenoid (calcium reactor), calcium reactor effluent pH probe, tank pH probe, and something like a AquaController 3. It is a combination of monitoring tank pH and if it is to low the stirrer is allowed to run and CO2 solenoid is disabled, if not the water just passes through the kalk chamber (it will still pick up a slight boost in pH). The person decides on their desired effluent pH and a point is set, so if the pH of the effluent drops too low it will cut the CO2 (standard calcium reactor stuff) to protect the tank and the media from turning to mush. This way if you need to increase evap to benefit from kalk, it is done safely because your controller manages your tank pH. BUT... BUT... only if you keep up with probe calibration and replacement, so you can assure yourself you are getting the most accurate numbers. But like I said this is how a few setups I read about have set theirs up. I was thinking I would add a sprinkler valve or combination of them, to the above setup so I could bypass the kalk stirrer in order to allow pure un-kalked water to top-off in times of high pH. But keep in mind that several very successful tanks are run at a pH of 8.4. I myself have just recently been able to keep my tank at 8.31 consistently.
