CA & KH coraliation!

[JD'sReef]

Because I do not want another crash like I have had in the past, can anyone lend me a hand on this topic?
How many DKH points should I expect to be dropping when dripping my tank with CA.
After dripping 3tsp of CA on Sunday I checked my KH before I continued on with the final 2tsp to drip.
My KH went down about 1.3dkh to a reading of 8.3dkh. I am just wondering if i should continue checking my KH level midway trough my weekly CA drip or if I can assume the KH will only decrease a few degrees? I always drip a batch of KH on sunday night for the week, so I would love to determine if my midweek KH check in nothing to worry about.
Cheers,
J.

 

[Anonymous]

JD - just realized that you had this thread too. After your levels are where you want them, you'll want to determine a daily B-ionic dosage that will maintain your levels. Ideally you'll end up in a situation where you'll only have to 'adjust' one or both of the parameters once a month or so.

When adjustments need to be made, this article will help...
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/nov2002/chem.htm

 

[iseeweed]

I have been using the www.twopartsolution.com system for 5 months now with great results. The system only costs pennies a day and is very easy to use. Check out their cool calculator at http://www.bulkreefsupply.com/i6/Calciu ... ation.html
I don't dose daily. I only check the levels once a week or so and make the adjustments according to the directions.

 

[JD'sReef]

iseaweed (cleaver name) I am doing the dame as you and think dosing everyday would be too time consuming since I like to pick up and leave town at any time.
I must give it a try though, anything good in life does not come easy. Miwoodar, is there a simple way to figure out my daily consumption? I gather that you compare one days test results with the following without any addition of what you are testing for. After determining my rate of consumption, how would I figure out my B-Ionic rate.
Later,
J.

 

[Anonymous]

dosing b-ionic takes all of 5 minutes-as soon as part 1 is spread through the water column, you should be dosing part 2

 

[Anonymous]

JD - Regarding determination of your Ca/alk needs...I would just continue dosing and testing once a week. (BTW - I like Vitz's idea of splitting your doses in half and doing them daily). If you're short at the end of the week go ahead and bump the daily dosing up a little for the next week. After a few weeks you should have a pretty good idea of what your 'maintenance' doses need to be. After that I would do biweekly and/or monthly tests...you're corals are going to grow which will slowly raise your Ca/alk demand (not such a bad problem to have :wink: ).

BTW - if you're testing a lot and don't want to burn through your kits while dialing in your doses, your calcium will drop 20 ppm for every 1 dkh in alkalinity.

 

[iseeweed]

I have seen a lot of people using dosing pumps on timers to dose ca, alk, and mg. Hopefully when money isn't quite as tight I can get a few pumps and figure out the daily consumption of the tank.
I agree that dosing daily is the best, most stable way-but it can be so time consuming!

 

[iseeweed]

One possible way to determine daily consumption may be to get your levels perfect, then wait 7 days. Retest and use a calculator like the one on the twopart.com website, and divide the readings by 7?? It may get you pretty close. :roll:

 

[JD'sReef]

Thanks,