KALKWASSER!!!

[tinycrazycrawler]

Because I wish to raise the Ca in my aquarium with the use of KW (i've only a Nielsen Reactor, not a Ca reactor), I am thinking to solutions.
Because I've read from J.Sprung that is possibile to mix CaOh also with salt water, not only RO water, I've thought that I can make a little pump flowing slow, drop by drop, from the sump the aquarium water in another simple little homemade reactor nightime, with a little quantity Caoh (1 little spoon...) added every evening. The question is: is this a good idea? Or the CaOh is compatibile only with RO water? If the answer is no, the only limit to the CaOh I can add every day is the aquarium PH... I would have bypassed the problem of only 1% evaporation every day, because the RO would go in my standard Nielsen reactor, and nightime the salt water would go in the other reactor... Now my morning ph is 8, and so I would have the possibility to try...
Another question: if my Nielsen reactor stirs too fast, some milky solution can exit and go in the sump. What can that solution do in the aquarium?
Is better if the N. Reactor go slower, so only "clear" water go in the sump?

Many thanks,
Marco
Marco

 

[caecosystems]

You should get better dissolvability mixing ro/di water with kalkwasser. The undissolved kalkwasser (calcium carbonate formed when kalkwasser reacts with atmospheric carbon dioxide) is undissolvable at pH we run in reef tanks. I believe it may also draw more calcium to itself. Kalkwasser is one of the few chemicals that dissolve more thoroughly in cold water then it does in warm or hot water, so maybe try to mix it with cold water when you make it.

 

[randy holmes-farley]

IMO, it is a bad idea to ever mix lime with tank water. Any suggestiuon that you can do so is predicated on the addition of a truly tiny amount that way.

If you increase the alkalinity of tank water by 0.5 meq/L with hydroxide (as in Ca(OH)2), the pH will jump by more than half a pH unit. Any more than this greatly risks precipitation of CaCO3 and MgCO3:

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/may2002/chem.htm

Lime put into fresh water, OTOH, can raise the alkalinity in the freshwater by 40 meq/L.

So you'd have to add 80 times as much of the salt water/lime mix as you would of the fresh water/lime mix to get the same results.

Anothr way of looking at it is that you'd have to be very careful how much lime got into the tank water as it passed through such a system. It would be way below saturation, so something like a Nilsen style reactor can't work. Personally, I think that that problem is the show stopper.