I STILL need help with Calcium

[Juck]

OK,, 5 days and $200 worth of new test-kits and additives and I'm still tearing my hair out.

Been dosing a 2-part additive for 4 days:

Now we have:

PH8.2
Mag 1250 (was 900,, raised it with Seachem Mg)
Alk 9
SG 1.023
Ca - Now less than 100 PPM!

Last night I dumped 2 full gallons of Kalk into the tank until the PH hit 8.5. After 2 hours I tested the Ca level and it was still below 100 on all 3 test kits,,, all that kalk made absolutely no difference.

Corals don't take up the Ca that quickly,, something else is happening here. The Ca is not available in a form the test kits recognize.

Any other suggestions out there?

 

[Anonymous]

From what I understand your mag may be off.


Edit woops guess its not now. perhaps it will take some time for the increased mag to affect the ca.

As I stated, my ca rose when I circulated 5x tank water through crushed oyster shells. Won't cost you much to give that a try.

 

[Juck]

rofl

 

[Anonymous]

Juck,

I recently had the same problem but I do not have allot of SPS corals.

I was using IO. I tested the freshly mixed IO. CA=260, Alk-10 DKH and mag=800. I would add Kalk or B-Ionic but every time I was doing a water change I would be lowering the CA back down due to the low CA/Mag in the IO.

I recently switched to Oceanic salt. The coraline has started all over the glass. I run a kalk reactor and my CA levels stay at 440 but my Alk is a little low at 6 DKH. I am working on raising that.

Test your fresh mix of IO. If its low maybe bring up the CA in the new salt mix first then do the WC.

IHTH.
_________________
Insurance Discussion

 

[Rlumenator]

I agree with the magnesium, also the Oceanic , which I just started using. Mix up a batch of water and check the calcium. Test your other parameters too, or take to lfs. and they will do it for you.

 

[Anonymous]

Last night I dumped 2 full gallons of Kalk into the tank until the PH hit 8.5. After 2 hours I tested the Ca level and it was still below 100 on all 3 test kits,,, all that kalk made absolutely no difference.

bad move

that'll crash the ca and precipitate it right out of the water

 

[Anonymous]

At this point you need to fix the tank first, then deal with keeping calicum up

if you have sps corals then kalk probably wont cut it, if they are growing nicely.

I would start with at least a 70 % water change, I prefer 90 % get that ionic imballanced water out of the tank and replace it

do not do 4 25% water changes and think that's the same, it is NOT, you must do a large one to fix it

after the water change your ca/dkh ballance should be restored, now concentrate on keeping it correct.

I would recomend a calcium reactor to anyone serious about keeping SPS or clams, it makes life simple.

Otherwise, get used to buying 2 part additives, if you use calcium cloride make sure you match with buffers, it works but it's not quite right (too much cloride)

 

[Garry thomas]

Last night I dumped 2 full gallons of Kalk into the tank until the PH hit 8.5. After 2 hours I tested the Ca level and it was still below 100 on all 3 test kits,,, all that kalk made absolutely no difference.

when you say you dumped 2 gallons of kalk in? how did you actually do this?

 

[Anonymous]

Last night I dumped 2 full gallons of Kalk into the tank until the PH hit 8.5. After 2 hours I tested the Ca level and it was still below 100 on all 3 test kits,,, all that kalk made absolutely no difference.

bad move

that'll crash the ca and precipitate it right out of the water

I agree with both.

As an experiment I set up a 65 quart tub with water softener salt. The to get calcium in there I dumped in about a pint of kalk. That set off one of the deapest nitrogen cycles I have ever measured. PH pegged the aquarium pharm***** test kit for over a month. As did ammonia, and nitrItes. And after it was all said an done, Calcium was still 0.0.

Obviously that was not the way to get calcium up or add kalk.

 

[ChrisRD]

Juck,

As others have mentioned the low Mg could have been the problem. BTW, is your salt mix low in Mg or Ca (sorry if you mentioned that already and I missed it)?

At this point I would take it slow and not try to correct the problem all at once, especially with large doses of kalkwasser that can really get your pH swinging.

A couple of large water changes over the next week or so would help reset your water parameters. From there I'd just keep-up with the dosing and watch your parameters until you're back on track.

 

[Juck]

>>when you say you dumped 2 gallons of kalk in? how did you actually do this?

I mixed up 2 gallons of Kalk,,, let it settle,, and poured it into the sump/return over about a 10 minute period until the PH jumped to 8.5

I'm going to try a big water change tomorrow. I'll check to see what the Ca level is in the new water before I add it.

Thanks for the comments.

 

[Garry thomas]

Well that is NOT the way to add kalk. It has a very high PH. You drip it in at about a drip every 5 to 10 seconds in a high flow area. I'm surprised you have any animals living at all after that. Plus by adding it to quick you can do the opposite to what you are trying to achieve.

 

[tazdevil]

As an experiment I set up a 65 quart tub with water softener salt.

Bob, that cannot be compared to using aquarium salt, and you know it. The formulations are so completely different that I wouldn't know where to begin. If you want to perform this experiment, you'd have to use aquarium salts to get a valid result from said experiment, not water softener salt or table salt.

 

[Juck]

>>Well that is NOT the way to add kalk.
>>It has a very high PH.

Yes, thanks for that Gary, I know full well the caustic properties of kalk,, that's why I dosed in the sump and monitored the PH of the main tank closely. I'm surprised you would think a 3.5% increase in Ph over 10 minutes would kill everything in the tank,,, everything was fine.

I wanted to see if I could raise the Ca even a little bit,, just to prove to myself it was some kind of ionic imbalance or whatever and not the corals taking up the Ca as others have suggested.

 

[Garry thomas]

Just hard to believe that 2 gallons of KALK would only raise the ph by 3.5 % in 10 minutes. :?

 

[ChrisRD]

Test the Ca and Mg in the new salt water to make sure that's not part of the problem.

That said, even with a salt mix that's corrected for good Ca and Mg levels, I've never been able to maintain Ca levels in an SPS tank with just kalk top-off. I always end-up topping off all evap with saturated kalk, plus having to use a 2-part and/or a Ca reactor as well.

Those SPS corals really suck down the calcium!

 

[Anonymous]

Just hard to believe that 2 gallons of KALK would only raise the ph by 3.5 % in 10 minutes. :?

That's what I was thinking too. That's a LOT of kalk for that size tank. Was it 1 or 2 tsps per gallon?

 

[DK]

Just as an aside. Two weeks ago, my alk was 8.5, ca was 450 and mg was 1350. In the interim, my halamidia took off and bacame a large bush. I have a ca reactor and a kalc reactor that the top off water flows through. This morning, the alk was 6, the ca was 300 and the mg was 1150. So, my point is that in a heavily stocked system (stuff eventually grows) ca utilization can increase dramatically in a short time. btw I put in several heaping tablespoons of Kent super buffer and a good shot of mg. If the ca doesn't rise sufficiently, I would than add turbo calcium. Increased the output from the ca reactor (dkh of 19) and hope I don't have to add more equipment..................enough is enough.