Innovative Marine Nuvo Int 200 (1 Viewer)

[Ben Nicholls]

If you can get a fresh air feed to the tank it would help. The closet I have my sump in shares a wall with the garage. I ran a tube through the wall to the air intake of the skimmer. It noticeably raises the pH. My day/night swing is 0.26 and I usually stay above 8.0.

 

[MistakesWereMade]

Been running the trident for awhile now and have my alk mostly dialed in. Dosing AFR and tropic marin balling part B to maintain alk. Current numbers are:
Alk - 8.75 dkh average
Cal - 350 ppm average
Mag - 1500 average

I think my calcium is a bit low so I thought about either adding in some kalkwasser or changing my AFR dose. If I change AFR my alk will get all messed up again. If I do kalkwasser I need to add a doser. Any suggestions? I would rather control the amount that I add so I dont want to incorporate it with my ATO. Any ideas how much I should add if I go this route? How long does it take to increase calcium going this route?

 

[Varig]

If you only want to bring up calcium, you have to use a direct calcium supplement, like the calcium chloride part of a 2 part dosing solution. Kalkwasser is Calcium Hydroxide, which means it brings up your calcium AND alkalinity in equal parts when you dose it (which is a really handy advantage if you need both Ca and Alk, but not in your case).

So my recommendation is to buy the calcium part of a 2 part dosing solution to get your calcium only up into the range that you want. Then monitor it for a few weeks/months to see if the AFR can keep things stable. If not and your calcium keeps dropping, you might just have a tank that uses a little more calcium than alk (apparently it happens) and thus would need to just keep doing a catch up dose of calcium every so often.


For completeness, IF you decided you wanted to still use some kalkwasser for the pH benefits, you would just want to reduce your AFR dosing slightly so that you could replace that amount with the alk/ca from the kalkwasser. I totally agree that incorporating via ATO is NOT the way to go (with seasonal swings in evaporation etc.). I personally mix my kalkwasser to the fully saturated strength (I think it's 3 tsp/gallon of water) then let it settle so any kalk that can't dissolve falls to the bottom of the bucket. I then use a dosing pump to dose the clear liquid off the top of the bucket.

Does that help?

 

[MistakesWereMade]

That does make a bit more sense. I didn't realize the kalkwasser was both. I suppose I should just go with the part A and dial it it from there. Pretty sure they recommend to do equal parts for their balling method.

I was not trying to become a chemist so the easier I can make it, the better. I also told myself I didn't ever want to chase numbers but here I am. Just trying to make things as healthy as I can. Most of my stuff is just battling for space. Wish I had stuff people wanted so I could get rid of some things.

 

[Varig]

Well, of course they recommend equal parts for balling when you're doing "real" 2 part dosing. But you're just trying to adjust up the calcium, so it's totally acceptable to just dose that part.

 

[MistakesWereMade]

Been awhile so here is an updated full tank shot.

Maybe the video will work for some of you.

View attachment tank.mov

I have been attempting the two part dosing now. I just recently switch from only part B and AFR to part A and part B. I saw my calcium levels drop quite a bit so going to try and even out the dosing.

I have not really changed the livestock. A friend shut down his tank and I ended up with a yellow coris wrasse.

As far as corals go, things are just battling for space. I should probably prepare some frags but I generally just give things away at this point. I don't really have a place to keep them though so they just end up in the sand.