hey seamonkey!

[spsick]

did you get your new shop set up o.k? when can I come by and get some 2 part and a dual tds meter? I'm going to stop being a wuss and make the jump from cbalance to your stuff, I was worried about the whole raising or lowering ph, but from what I can gather, cbalance and bionic raise you ph as well, got any comments on that? besides , i'd rather give a local reefer my money than julian( I dont think me not buying cbalance will hurt his pocketbook:)

[sea monkey]

you can actually make the DIY two part that doesn't lower or raise the PH. I believe it is a 7 to one mix of unbaked baking soda to baked baking soda or soda ash.

Seems like 90% of the people out there perfure the recipe that raises the PH because corals can utilize the carbonate better in the 8.3 range and most tanks don't find themselves in that range without additives of some sort.

[smeese]

So Sea Monkey......I need to do the two part soon. If my ph is normally 8.0-8.1 and I am planning on hooking up a kalk reactor with the two part which recipe do you reccommend for me? Will the Kalk do the trick or is it best to raise it more than that?

[wolmutt]

I drip Kalk about 16 hours, starting right when the halides turn off through the night until they turn back on at noon. I still need to use the recipe #1 that raises ph. If you don't have a dosing pump sea monkey has them for a great price (I have three of them). I have analyzed when my ph drops and have been able to program my timer programs on the AC jr. to deliver 20 minutes of the alkalinity part for each period of ph below 8.3 to keep my tank at the 8.3 to 8.45 range (I find that 20 minutes keeps the ph around 8.4 and ph doesn't drop for about an hour and a half in my tank). I use the AC jr. and aquanotes to analyzed ph on my computer, its pretty sweet. Of course all of your dosing quanities will be dictated by your tank size and coral demands for alk and cal.

[sea monkey]

So Sea Monkey......I need to do the two part soon. If my ph is normally 8.0-8.1 and I am planning on hooking up a kalk reactor with the two part which recipe do you reccommend for me? Will the Kalk do the trick or is it best to raise it more than that?


there isn't really a flat answer for this one, every tank is different. I personally stopped using kalk because the combination of the 2 part and kalk brought my PH too high. I also find it easier to find the right amount of 2 part to dose if i am not also dosing kalk because kalk is not always the same potency (doubly so in a reactor)

however , I know David finds that the 2 part alone doesn't raise his PH enough so he also doses kalk at night .

The nice thing about recipe one (raises PH) is it is twice as strong as recipe two so you don't have to change out the buckets as often . my gallon lasts me about a month right now , i much prefer that over 2 weeks . if you have a fish room you can certainly make it in larger amounts , it wont go bad as long as you seal the container so it isn't allowed to evaporate.

[jquigley78]

For what its worth, I have been dosing 2-part now for almost 7 months and I have only been adding 25ml a day of recipe #1. I also add kalk 24/7 with a dosing pump. Everything is stable and the kalk keeps the 2-part additions much lower, so much so that I still havent even gone through a gallon of each yet and I am going on 3 months now! By the way the tank is only a 75 gallon but I probably have almost 20 SPS from 2" frags to 10" colonies, and 6 medium sized LPS's and one 6" maxima. So one would think my demand would be higher, but surpisingly its not and I strongly contribute that to the Kalk dosing.

[sea monkey]

you certainly can dose both and there are several reasons why one might or might not do it. There are tons of ways to reach the same result here.

For me i dont need the kalk to keep my PH high and it was easier to dial in the exact amount of two part to use with out kalk. It is also easier to keep track of how much mag to use . with two part only you just add 2 1/2 cups of mag solution when you are done with each gallon of two part , if you also add kalk you will need to find a way to account for the additional calcium and carbonate you are adding. none of these things are really hard hard but just one more thing to do.

judging by our sales there are tons of people who use both : )

[David Grigor]

I'd also like to know when you complete the move and settled for visitors.

I want to pick up 2 MJ900 med flow kits, 2 basic magnets to finish tricking out my frag tank. Hopefully in time for the meeting at my place.