Kalk Dripping ??s

JustDavidP

JustDavidP

Non-member
Folks,

I'm re-rigging my auto top off barrel to top off with Kalk. I need to wait until I install a tee and valve between it and the RO/DI system so I can have yet another barrel to collect RO/DI water for water changes etc. For now, I broke out the ol' Kent doser and set it to drip kalk.

I mixed the Kalk as per direction (1 tsp per gallon of water), mixed and let it sit for two days (was just too busy to get to it). I siphoned off the clear liquid and left the sediments on the bottom. As a matter of fact, I left more than 4 inches of water because the doser is not a large one at all. However, I woke this morning to find a 3 inch, skinny and white tube of kalk in my sump!

Does this happen to you at all? I thought it should be easily absorped by my water and I shouldn't see any solids. I will add one thing; sometime, overnight, the plastic tubing fell into the water. Is this a bad thing? It should drip into the water right...rather than trickling out of the tube UNDER the water correct?

Maybe it was just that. Maybe the kalk water mixing with the tank water in the tube caused the problem? Maybe the small clot of kalk is normal? I dunno... care to shed any light?

Dave
 
Was the tube clean/ clear when you used it? Maybe it was leftover kalk in the tube that was gradually pushed out?

I use the Kent doser, and that has never happened to me. :confused:
 
It was clean. When/if I store stuff like that, I rinse them clean. I learned from previous "stinky" mistakes! :) I still think that because the end of the tube was in the water, it caused a precipitation of the kalk. Does your doser drip or is the line in the water?

The damned line is soo long, that I'd have to cut, replace and re-glue the parts to make it short enough that it doesn't touch the water.
 
Dave, I just started using the Kent dripper this weekend also, mine is in the water and I noticed residue build up as you did, but only about a half inch or so, I just broke it off. I might try taking out the end on the next drip, that's probably the problem.
 
I drip mine into an air hole in an AquaC protein skimmer. Read somewhere (probably from Dr. Randy H-F) that it helps precipitate out the phosphates. I don't know for sure, but that little orange dripper end fits neatly in the hole, it doesn't fall out, and it doesn't seem to hurt the output of the skimmer. :D

So, to answer your question the end is not in the water. It drips in. :cool:
 
Aquadiva said:
I drip mine into an air hole in an AquaC protein skimmer. Read somewhere (probably from Dr. Randy H-F) that it helps precipitate out the phosphates.
Click to expand...

Really...hmm.. I'm going to have to look into that... can't hurt? or can it?

Thanks
 
David, as you've surmised, you have to drip the kalk into the water, rather than having the tube submerged, in my experience. By the way, I thought the recipe for saturated kalkwasser was 2t/gallon, but I could be remembering wrong.

Marlboro, Kalk is a very inexpensive additive for Calcium and alkalinity (assuming you use pickling lime, and not LFS "Kalkpowder" which is the same stuff but about 10 times more expensive). The advantages of dripping it with your top-off water is that it decreases the ammount of other expensive additives (like B-ionic) you need to add, and unlike 2-part additives it is completely balanced, meaning it supplies Ca and Alk in the same proportion that they are used by your tank inhabitants. Other convenient benefits are possibly precipitating harmful phosphates out of your tank water at the site of addition, and raising your system pH (since Kalk has a pH of 14 or something - some people drip kalk just at night to counter the natural pH drop which occurs after lights out).

Nate
 
WOW....good explaination!!! That's a keeper....and see

Nate agrees that it precipitates out phosphates. Thanks Nate. :) I feel better now.
 
Aquadiva said:
Nate agrees that it precipitates out phosphates. Thanks Nate. :) I feel better now.
Click to expand...

Alas I'm no sort of authority, I'm just speaking from what I've read, and somewhat from my own experience/what makes sense to me.

I'm afraid the phosphate ppt is mostly heresay, but since it's not a critical thing, I'm comfortable passing rumors :p. Besides, wouldn't it be nice if it's true! :)
 
Hey David - I drip kalk by way of an aquamedic peristaltic pump to my tank from a large trash can in another room. I use 2 tsp of pickling lime per gallon of RO. I keep the tube feeding the tank above the water and have never seen anything like what you had. Can you get the tube above the water and drip INTO the sump?
 
Thanks everyone....

Nate, I read 1tsp per gallon for every day dripping to maintain levels. The instructions (won a container of Seachem Kalk in a raffle) did say to use 2tsp per gallon if you were trying to RAISE the levels rather than maintain. There is also instruction for "slurry", but that seems unnecessary and even scary to me at this time. Do you think I should do the 2tsp per gallon? Can't really hurt concidering how slow I'm dripping right?

Today, I'm searching the bits and bites of this web to find RHF's articles...any and all of em. I'm sick of the two part world..it's costing me an arm and leg with my calcium demands. I'm sick of ph swings and alk issues too. All of this is because I can't get onto a "faithful" schedule of two part dosing. Kalk dripping seems to be the answer.

I also understood that dripping kalk can "lock" phosphate by literally taking and making it into crystal format in carbonate or something. That all sounds good to me. My concern was whether or not you should drip Kalk directly into a skimmer. Will it hurt the acrylic? Will the kalk, mixed with the turbulent aeration cause problems (They do advice NOT to aerate kalk for some reason... I think it has to do with PH). Will my skimmer be skimming out all the GOOD stuff in the kalk? If there are no issues, it makes sense to me to do it.

Diare.. .(how fun is it to say your name?!.. I just love it!) I will try to raise the tube to ensure it is not in the water, but I really want to keep the whole doser under my stand and because of that, I may have to butcher the Kent doser and rebuild. The way it is now, the entire rig is like 6' long :( I like the drip counter, but may have to cut everything short and just use the clamp and watch the drip as it leaves the simple tube. I didn't want to mess with it out of fear of causing leaks etc.

In any case, thank you all for your input. I've been dosing for about a week now and can tell that something good is happening. Call me crazy, but it seems to make my water clearer too. Is there anything scientific to prove that that may be happening? Maybe by locking all the nasties in a carbonate or something?? Maybe the uptake of "stuff" by my corals, clams and such has been tweaked for performance because I'm more "Chemically tuned" I dunno... but it all looks good to me.

Dave
 
That's great that you're seeing an improvement Dave. Might be because Kalk is supposed to make your skimmer work better (by affecting the water's surface tension, I think).

I'd do 2t/g because you want a saturated solution. I think it's odd that that bottle of Kalk thinks it know's how much kalk you need to drip to "maintain" levels. ;) If your tank is getting back to your previous stocking levels I'm sure saturated Kalk won't be too much for you. Just do some testing to see how the Kalk is keeping up with demands.
 
Last edited:
Will do... Last nights numbers:

pH 8.2
Alk 11dKH - 4m/L
Calcium 380

I'm thinking if I do use the 2tsp per gallon , I could get the calcium up s'more.

Dave
 
I'd throw in some DowFlake or other Ca additive to get the levels balanced first, because you probably don't want Alk to go much higher, right?
 
the only thing you need to remember with kalk dosing is the lack of magnesium. If your magnesium levels get depleted, the entire chemical process for calcium and alkalinity won't complete. Long story short... you end up adding extra kalk because your levels are dropping... but they don't rise, so you add more kalk... and soon your tank will turn to milky white with the calcium precipitatiing out of your tank in one massive move. This actually happened to me years ago...

Needless to say, make sure you keep magnesium in the mix ;)
 
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