Dosing Kalk

[irvp13]

Hi all,

Recently I switched from adding buffer in my top off water and dosing calcium separately to adding Kalk in my top off and take care of Ca adn alk at the same time.
I have mostly softies and a few LPS so my Ca demand is not much.

So I started by getting my Ca to 450, alk to 11dhk and mag to 1350. I started dosing half teaspoon of kalk per gallon of top off water and my alk and Ca levels dropped in time so I keep increasing it until I reached 2 teaspoons of Kalk per top off gallon and my Ca level was keep at 450.
However my alk keeps dropping.

Do I need to dose additional alk to keep it at the same level? if so, can I mix it in my top off water along with the kalk?

Could it be that I'm adding too much kalk and the raise in Ca is depleting the alk?

Please help!

 

[cdamiano]

What is your alk dropping to? I don't think you need to necessarily keep it at 11. If it's in the 8-11 range that is fine. The important thing is to keep it stable. Make sure you check your MG and PH also. All of these have an effect on each other. Take a look at this article http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-05/rhf/index.php and this one: http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-01/rhf/index.php

 

[irvp13]

well, the thing is that it drops to 8 and my ph starts going from 7.8 in the morning to 8.3 in the afternoon. Then I dose alk and we are happy again between 8.1 and 8.4