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Thread: Keeping up Ca, Mg and str.

  1. #41

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    Using a kalk reactor to top off

    Using a simple, somewhat inexpensive Kalk Reactor is a pretty easy way to supply the needed Kalkwasser. Very low maintenance, all you do is keep about 1 cup of kalkwasser powder in the bottom of the reactor (depending on your system and how fast you replace top off water, this could be every few weeks, or month).
    We use the Two Little Fishies brand, and no complaints so far:

    http://www.expressions-ltd.com/Kalkw...q-tlf42300.htm

    It works by pulling RO (or RO/DI) water from your small reservoir, passing through the reactor which slightly stirs the kalk powder that is settled in the bottom, and then 'overflows' out the top, into the tank/sump. Need to lower pH? Add the vinegar to the RO reservoir, which will mix it with the Kalkwasser in the reactor. I suppose you could fully automate the vinegar by having a dosing pump administer the vinegar into the RO reservoir periodically as well.

  2. #42
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    Quote Originally Posted by kerry View Post
    Here is a good article I though I would share about adding vinegar to your Kalk solutions. http://www.reefscapes.net/articles/b...alkwasser.html
    Quote Originally Posted by Expressions-LTD View Post
    Using a simple, somewhat inexpensive Kalk Reactor is a pretty easy way to supply the needed Kalkwasser. Very low maintenance, all you do is keep about 1 cup of kalkwasser powder in the bottom of the reactor (depending on your system and how fast you replace top off water, this could be every few weeks, or month).
    We use the Two Little Fishies brand, and no complaints so far:

    http://www.expressions-ltd.com/Kalkw...q-tlf42300.htm

    It works by pulling RO (or RO/DI) water from your small reservoir, passing through the reactor which slightly stirs the kalk powder that is settled in the bottom, and then 'overflows' out the top, into the tank/sump. Need to lower pH? Add the vinegar to the RO reservoir, which will mix it with the Kalkwasser in the reactor. I suppose you could fully automate the vinegar by having a dosing pump administer the vinegar into the RO reservoir periodically as well.
    My question then becomes this: according to the first article quoted above, you should mix the vinegar in the water and THEN add the kalk powder. If you use a kalk stirrer to make a saturated solution and then pump vinegar-laden top off water through it, does this accomplish the same thing, or is the chemistry different?

  3. #43

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    Well, I'm certainly no expert so could be misspoken here... but the kalk reactor is using the vinegar/RO water to do the saturating. So if you are asking if it's a problem have a mixed water/kalk solution, and THEN having vinegar/RO water push through it- it's not like that. Anything in the reactor came from your reservoir, so it would 'all' have vinegar in it (if you added vinegar into the reservoir)

  4. #44
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    No, what I'm saying is that mixing the vinegar in the RO water and then adding the kalk is not necessarily the same as mixing a saturated solution in a stirrer and then pumping a vinegar and RO solution through it. There may be an order that things need to be done in, and that is my question.

  5. #45
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    Really not a fan of Kalk Reactors.. every single person I know that bought one had their tank crash because of them. Not just talking 1 or 2 people, talking over a dozen just locally, even LFS, all had kalk reactors stick on at one point, dumping tons of kalk into the tanks, crashing them because they had their RO/DI output line plumbed directly into the Kalk Reactor, so it never ran out. They are the one piece of equipment that gets a unanimous "NO! Never use them!" when anyone asks about them on the local forum. My LFS had this happen to an amazing 400G SPS display tank. Years of hard work and 10's of thousands of dollars gone overnight when it stuck on. Using Kalk in a small ATO bucket or using dosers for 2 part are both much safer methods for maintaining alk/ca levels and both are cheaper to do.

  6. #46
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    I add vinegar to my KALK when I add it to my dosing unit. I put 2 cap-fulls of vinegar into the dosing bottle then add 1L of KALK. I was also wondering, can you and vinegar to Calcium chloride supplement??
    150G. Reef/Mix
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    40G. Fish/Reef. Algae Scrubbers on ALL my SW
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    10G. SW Hospital/new fish quarantine/pod breeder tank
    6 stage RO/DI system 200 GPD.

  7. #47
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    Good point Ace. I guess if I were to do a kalk stirrer, I would want the ATO pump on a controller that could monitor it and cut it off if it sensed a maximum dose time frame, then set off an alarm.

    Still wondering about the vinegar in top-off then pumped through a kalk doser. But probably will just do it in the top off for a start and see how it goes.

  8. #48
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    I didn't feel the vinegar should be mixed into the KALK until its ready to be dispensed but, maybe it does not make any difference.
    150G. Reef/Mix
    125G. 3 Regular Oscars/1 Jack Dempsey
    75G. 20+ Africans
    40G. Fish/Reef. Algae Scrubbers on ALL my SW
    10G. SW Fish/Reef.
    10G. SW Hospital/new fish quarantine/pod breeder tank
    6 stage RO/DI system 200 GPD.

  9. #49
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    Kerry, you were the one that posted the article - maybe you should read it again! It sounds to me like it makes all the difference:

    Dissolving the Kalk powder in the Vinegar first will accomplish several very good things.

    First, it will get more Calcium ions (Ca++) into the solution because you are dissolving the Ca(OH)2 in an acid instead of water, and forming Calcium Acetate, which exists as a dissociated equilibrium of free Calcium ions and Acetate ions.

    Second, the Acetic Acid (Vinegar) provides an equivalent of all the CO2 you need to avoid precipitating the newly-added Calcium ions as useless white Calcium Carbonate powder.

    Third, after all the cool Calcium ion chemistry is over, the leftover Acetate ions from the broken-down Vinegar leaves you with free organic Carbon in the water that feeds the bacteria in your tank so that it converts more poisonous Nitrates to NO2 gas (a very good thing).

    Adding Vinegar in Kalkwasser is one of the few win-win situations for reefers -- it has a great up side and I've yet to encounter a down side to doing it. I don't know why so few reefers do it -- lack of understanding of the chemistry behind it maybe -- but a lot more are starting now that some respected reef writers have discovered it and have recommended it and even written up detailed instructions for it.

    -----

    The advice not to mix the Kalk too much is right on target. As the equations I posted show, if you are not using any Vinegar in the mix you certainly DO need to avoid mixing the Kalk powder with CO2 until AFTER it's dripped into the tank.

    Look again at the equations. Both the GOOD reaction that liberates useful Calcium ions (Ca++) into your tank, and the BAD reaction that wastes the Calcium ions as solid Calcium Carbonate (CaCO3), require the addition of different amounts of CO2.

    The problem with allowing the CO2 reaction to occur as you mix your Kalk in a container without Vinegar is that you are mixing it in a comparatively small quantity of water that contains only a very limited amount of CO2. So, instead of having enough CO2 to go all the way to useful Bicarbonate ions (HCO3-, or Alkalinity) as you want it to, the chemical reaction stops at the undesirable Carbonate ion (CO3--). This is what sets the stage for the Calcium ions to precipitate out as useless solid Calcium Carbonate while still in the mixing container -- the Kalk mixes with SOME CO2, but not with ENOUGH CO2.

    If your mixing container contained ample CO2, i.e., enough to fully react all the Kalkwasser as Bicarbonate ions, you would indeed then want to do all the mixing with CO2 right there in the container. It's only because there's not enough CO2 present in the small container that you need to limit the mixing to avoid precipitation.

    So, you've actually hit on one good reason WHY we want to add the Vinegar to the mixing container -- the Acetic Acid in the Vinegar provides the equivalent of enough CO2 to take the reaction all the way to the desired end products for which we drip Kalk -- that is, to produce free Calcium ions and free Bicarbonate ions in solution in our tanks.

  10. #50
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    from reading this, it makes sense that if you have vinegar in the top off water, then push this through a kalk stirrer, you would not be inducing the vinegar at the right time, and not enough of it, as the solution in the kalk stirrer is saturated already, so the reaction has already occurred and the 'stage is set' for precipitation of Calcium ions.

    From the way this reads to me, you need to add the vinegar into the top off water BEFORE you add the kalk, so that the reaction that happens in done in a CO2 rich environment.

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