Calcium Deposits On Glass

On my last 20% water change, my Ca, Mag, and Alk levels seemed to dip more than they proportionately should have. I took action and using Bulk Reef Supply's calculator; figured out and dispensed the correct amounts of each supplement to achieve Cal of 450, Alk of 12, and Mag of about 1400.

All went fine, except Calcium levels exceeded 500. During the night, some very nasty deposits accumulated on my glass giving it a hazed, badly scratched appearance. I have confirmed it's only a deposit, and not scratches, as I inverted a bottle of vinegar tightly to a paper towel, allowing it to absorb less than a teaspoon, and rubbed it on a spot of glass underwater. It it immediately eradicated the calcuim, leaving clean unblemished glass.

I can't remove this with my magnetic float cleaner, or my scrubbie wand.

I was wondering if anyone has ever experienced this and how they handled it.

If I understand my basic facts on operation of a Ca. Reactor, CO2 is used to lower pH to cause calcium to become in solution. If the pH were to go down in the tank sufficiently, the deposits would become soft enough to be scrubbed off, or perhaps leave on their own. I've tried scrubbing in the middle of the night, when I know that the tank's pH would be down due to lack of O2 from daytime photosynthesis. I am aware that this intentional lowering of pH inside the Ca. Reactor could not be done on a larger scale in the water column without jeopardizing the tank's inhabitants.

I'm at a loss here, folks.

Does anyone have any sage advice?

 

Reactor Setup help
good target is 6.8 pH in the first chamber. the filmy haze you described happens when using to much kallwaser. there are alot of elements in the new saltwater that you dont have after the tank sits for awhile. it takes time to have everything else blend together, so next time dont dose right away, just wait, then test. raise the Mg first then either Ca or dKH, not both at the same time.

also many test kits are limited in what they can test within each element, dont let them fool you.

 

Thanks for the help, guru. You understand I don't have a Ca. Reactor, and these deposits are on my aquarium glass, right?

 

uh, ok. maybe i read it wrong. either way your system was out of whack. keep that site for future reference.

 

Thanks for trying to help!

 

Ok, here is a newbie solution that is probably wrong.......Can you increase the ALK to 14, which would decrease the Ca++ by about 40 points to a point where hopefully it will not crystalize out. Then do a water change in a few days and go with it.

OK.......I am ready.........

Oh, and this comes from the guy who creates fountains in his dining room.

 

Well, I would suggest not dosing so much at one time. I try to only dose enough SuperBuffer dKH to raise dKH by one per day. On my 38g tank 1 1/2 teaspoons of SuperBuffer will raise the dKH by one. If I need to raise it by three points, then I will take three days to raise it. The same goes for Magnesium and Calcium. I try not to raise Mg by more than 20 ppm per day. May take a week if I need to raise it 100ppm. Same for Calcium. Slowly raising it will prevent Calcium deposits from forming. I know this doesn't help with the current white spots on your glass, but at least it may help from getting future ones.

I just started to use a Kent Aquadoser to drip in Kalkwasser, but if I need to increase the Calcium (or dKH), then I use the above method. Once I get the drip rate set on the Aquadoser correctly, I hopefully won't need to fuss with Calcium and dKH anymore (or at least not very often).



I use this to scrape my glass, and it seems to work for getting hardened deposits off of the glass.

Aquarium Cleaning & Maintenance: Pro-Scrapers

D: Pro-Scraper Long 3" blade/24" handle