There are many ways of maintaining CA and ALK in a system, recently i switched of my reactor for a few reasons. One of them being it could not keep up with the demand of the system and i did not feel that i had proper control and my PH was starting to run on the low side because i was pushing the reactor harder and harder.
Anyway swapped over to Calcium chloride and Bicarb, both purchased at the chemist as on a big system it would cost an absolute fortune to use branded products. I now had control of both CA and ALK and could determine what i wanted them at. I raised my ALK to 8dkh and my CA at 390. To maintain these levels i was using 6tsp of bicarb and 7tsp of calcium chloride a night. I started to worry about the amount of chloride i was adding to the system, but at the end of the day all the corals looked happy.
I then spoke to AC and he suggested i use the kalk slurry method, which i have now been using for a week and have been very impressed with the results. I still add the bicarb daily but now add 1.5 tsp of calcium hydroxide every evening. This has raised my ph to the 8.3 level, kept my ca at 400 and is fairly constant with very little swing except when i add the slurry. I have noticed a marked increase in the growth tips on my birds nest and my large clam which has seemed to slow down in growth over the past few months, has suddenly picked up the growth rate again. These are the 2 bits of live stock i usually watch to gauge the health of my system.
All i can say is all the above methods do work very well, you will have to be cautious when using kalk what ever form you choose to use it in. The only draw back to dosing manually is when you go away on holiday........who do you trust to do the dosing.
Anyway swapped over to Calcium chloride and Bicarb, both purchased at the chemist as on a big system it would cost an absolute fortune to use branded products. I now had control of both CA and ALK and could determine what i wanted them at. I raised my ALK to 8dkh and my CA at 390. To maintain these levels i was using 6tsp of bicarb and 7tsp of calcium chloride a night. I started to worry about the amount of chloride i was adding to the system, but at the end of the day all the corals looked happy.
I then spoke to AC and he suggested i use the kalk slurry method, which i have now been using for a week and have been very impressed with the results. I still add the bicarb daily but now add 1.5 tsp of calcium hydroxide every evening. This has raised my ph to the 8.3 level, kept my ca at 400 and is fairly constant with very little swing except when i add the slurry. I have noticed a marked increase in the growth tips on my birds nest and my large clam which has seemed to slow down in growth over the past few months, has suddenly picked up the growth rate again. These are the 2 bits of live stock i usually watch to gauge the health of my system.
All i can say is all the above methods do work very well, you will have to be cautious when using kalk what ever form you choose to use it in. The only draw back to dosing manually is when you go away on holiday........who do you trust to do the dosing.