Kalk?

Why does everyone seem to use kalk? Every time I hear mention of it, it sounds like a pain. Talk of how it has to be dripped and leaves a strange goop on the bottom of top off reservoir. What params is it made to change, and why do you use it as apposed to other chemicals?

 

I use kalk and liquid calcium. Liquid calcium alone can't keep up with my tank so I use kalk too. I've never found kalk much of a pain I just top off my water with it every day. I don't do the drip thing anymore. I use to drip it into my tank but it was to much of a pain. And I have found that doing a small top off with kalk every day doesn't screw anything up. Just add it at night so the ph doesn't spike so high.

 

Myself I use Kalk because my Ca reactor cant keep my Ca in the mid 400's but it self. Plus I like the benefit of burning off the CO2 I am putting in the tank for the Ca reactor. I run all my makeup water thru Kalk before it enters the tank. The only time this is not happening is when I am mixing and for about 1.5 hrs after the mix so the particles can settle before I turn it back on. I add about 3 tablespoons of powder every 11 to 13 days and that is pretty much it.

 

Kalkwasser info here: Kalkwasser

I use kalk to help maintain my calcium levels same as Otty above. The benefit far out weighs the pain of making and adding it. Do a little research starting with the link above

over time Kalk lowers your ALK and you will need to buffer.

 

kalk is great, all you have to do is a little work once a week and your steadily dosing 24/7 keeping your tank very stable. Its really not nearly as tedious as people make it out to be. I have to clean out the bottom of my ATO reservoir maybe once every 6 weeks, and that takes all of 15 minutes.

~Will.

 

;D quote of the day !! I like it !

 

Also it raises your pH so lots of people dose it over the course of the night to help keep pH stable.
I've found it to be a hassle to deal with personally. If I ever did it again I would get some sort of reactor to dose it with, something I could maintain once a month or every couple of months and run a set amount of RO water through the reactor every night.
I think a lot of people like it because it's just one chemical that should keep up with most of your alk and calcium demands. AFAIK it should not lower anything although your system may require additional supplements because depending on the organisms in your tank, they don't all use alk and cal in the exact proportion that kalk adds it.
It also has some potential side benefits like precipitating some phosphates and some other things.

Here's an article about some pros/cons.
What Your Grandmother Never Told You About Lime by Randy Holmes-Farley - Reefkeeping.com

 

From my experience Kalk worked great to maintain pH, alk and CA (in addition to 2-part I was using at the time), I used it for over a year on my current reef. However, depending on the volume of your system if you're not using the kalk in a reactor, you will soon get tired of mixing it if you have a larger size tank (I'd say 75g +).

I was mixing about 12 gallons of kalk weekly (swapping out containers 3 times a week) and using it in my diy drip system, it kept my parms stable and my corals reacted well to it...but I got tired of mixing it, worrying about inhaling the powder and damages it could cause....I did try it in my ATO system but it just clogged up everything, I had to be cleaning out the lines every few weeks...so I got a CA reactor and life is much easier now, I get to spend more time viewing my tank instead of worrying about mixing kalk, replacing 5g bottles and adjusting drip ever few days.

The main reason I chose kalk to begin with was "cost", it's much cheaper than a CA reactor initially....however if you're mixing a lot of it over an extended period of time I think it you end up spending more on Kalk.

When I setup the CA reactor I was having trouble keeping my CA over 400, someone recmmended adding a 2nd chamber, after about 2 wks my CA was almost 500, I had to cut back the flow rate and CO2 through the reactor.

 

I drip kalk through my ATO using an aqualifter. I use a 15 gallon tank for my top off water. I simply dump in a few tablespoons of kalk, turn on the mixing pump for a few minutes, let it settle. I also run a cal RX and the kalk helps keep my ph up.