Kalk is the only thing in my 5 or so years of reefing where I can without a doubt say "yes, this thing I'm adding is causing a clear benefit to the health of my tank" pH is higher, corals are growing faster, next to no loss, everything is fantastic. Being a reefer, I have over the years tried other methods or setup tanks with different things to try them, but always find myself coming back to just dosing kalkwasser and suddenly those tanks begin to thrive within a week. Its honestly amazing.
Im a OG Reefer and some of my best tanks over the last 22 years were ones where make up water was replaced with Kalkwasser almost exclusively once I had enough corals to start dropping my Alk and Ca a bit. I mix in a 2 gallon lemonade/tea jar with a spigot. I then add the clear liquid to a container where I have a small valve installed and drip it into my tank much like a IV at night when the lights are off. I have my "IV" set up in an area of very high flow so its dispersed gradually and as evenly as possible. Its the easiest/simpleist way I have found to maintain Ph, Cal. and Alk in my tanks without breaking the bank in the process.
I wish I could evaporate more in the winter w/o losing heat$$$ my ph takes a dive not being able to dose as much kalk. I use an in home C02 monitor so I know it's not the air... I love the relaxing nature of your vids 🙂
First of all the thumbnail 👌, secondly everything you said is 100% correct and I fully agree with you. I personally mix the kalk directly into my ato then dose all of it into into my sump have been doing so for 5 years with zero ill effect 🤣.
I recently purchased an Elegance coral as they are beautiful creatures. I was mindful of your video saying that the coral has a penchant for snails. I was surprised to see my porcelain crab plonked on top of the Elegance when the lights were off.
I do the ato. Evaporation rate is 1 to 1 1/4 gallons a day. My corals are doing very well. In the past I've had low ph problems so I installed a ph reactor and then a carbon reactor for water clarity. All looks well. (Keeping fingers crossed.)
Brilliant video. I’ve used kalk for over 20 years, it superb! Once demand exceeds what I can dose via top off it’s fantastic combined with a secondary dosing regime such as a calcium reactor or 2/3 part dosing. I get the most tremendous results and really dose help elevate the pH. Great content as always and absolutely beautiful cinematography I found myself pausing it just to take it in. Thank you!
Hi thanks for all your fantastic suggestions I’m dosing with a versa at 9 litres a day though 25 feet of tubing feeding my Red Sea 1000. How often do you think I should be cleaning the tubing, and how would you recommend me doing it? Thanks again for all your brilliant advice and videos you have helped me through my 4 year journey more than you’ll ever know 👍👍👍👍👍
Congrats on 100k! Thank you for this video... however what i miss hearing from anyone on this topic is how do you know how much to dose? I have a 75g tank with a 20g sump and a 3gal canister filter, so roughly 80g with the rocks and sand volume accounted for. My tank is about 6 months old and i do a 20g waterchange weekly as maintenance
When I started primarily started using Lyme water my tank hit another level. There were other knock on effects related to stability that seemed to coincide with the addition. I used a small pump connected to my ato. I then turned on and off my pump with a timer. This way I could add more at night with less during lights on. I did supplement calcium chloride with a dosing pump dosing pump to fine tune my numbers. For mag I just put a pile in the tank sump when it was low. Usually every two weeks..I did test and calculate)))
Love kalkwasser best thing I did for my reef but I dose oversaturated mixture by keeping it fluidised in its storage container. Works great but alot more risk if your not careful.
Just shows how real and super important it is that we urgently stop burning stuff and move away from fossil fuels when you see how big an impact low PH due to high CO2 has on the corals, because we cant put Kalkwasser in the oceans!
If I use two teaspoons of Kalk per gallon of water instead of one teaspoon, am I ending up with a higher concentration or am I just wasting that second teaspoon?
I had 2 tanks. One dosed 2-Part and the other Kalkwasser. The smaller 60g cube tank with the Kalk (Brightwell with Stront & Mag) had Tons of Coraline! It wasn’t even a very mature tank. It had a lot of Acans a Hollywood Stunner and a Monti cap. The polyp extension was great; the corals colors were great and everything grew well. Was it the Kalk? I don’t know.
This is the perfect spot to ask how the OH ions differ from carbonate ions in reducing pH and keeping ions available for the corals to uptake. I tried dosing kalk once and tanked my dkh to 3. If kalkwasser increases alkalinity shouldn’t it allow carbonate hardness to stay high?
Interesting video. Tempting to try but I’m not sure I should make the switch away from Triton method as it’s working so well currently and my PH is over 8.4.
I’ve been just adding water to the unresolved kalk in my dosing bucket and not skipping a beat with the doser. Am I doing anything wrong? My tank has never looked better btw
Informative great video but there is not enough videos on how to install the kalkwasser equipment and how to dose it without overdosing, underdosing or having pH jumping up and down every day. I would like to see more examples and potential issue and fixes. Anything from the little cheap tank with the dripping kalk on top of the tank, through the stirrers, brute containers, pH controllers, apex systems, gravity dosing etc. I think this is what scares newbies like me and its little bit overwhelming. We already know that the reef community says its great but majority of videos goes into the science about why is it good again but not so much on how to properly run it. I just got mine setup, and i hate that my pH is at 8.1 in the morning when the lights are off and during the day when the lights are on and pH goes to 8.4 sometimes 8.5. I cant find the sweet stable point.
Day/night pH swings are pretty common. With the lights on, the tank is consuming CO2 for photosynthesis and that raises the pH. At night that stops so the ph goes down again. Some people only run their calcium reactor during the day for that reason. Increasing the water volume with a large external sump can smooth the swing out too. Or some people run some sort of refugium/algae reactor with the lights turning on when the display tank's light go off and back off when the display lights up to keep the photosynthetic CO2 uptake going 24hrs.
@@brinks128 A "kalk reactor" as in a doser for kalkwasser or as in a container full of calcium carbonate that you feed CO2 into? I was talking about the latter because it tends to lower pH. Whereas the prior increases pH.
I mix the kalk in a separate tub and put lid on it and leave settle during the day, leave to settle out syphon off clear solution into another drum to be added to the tank minus the sediment in the bottom . The drum on the tank is connected to a dosing pump that doses the kalk overnight slowly to the same near amout the tank evaporated during the day. The kalk dosing stops just before lights on and calcium reactor fires up at the same time , calcium reactor runs during light period and for a couple hours after. Ph typically 8.1 overnight and maxes out at 8.4 end of day. So kalk overnight only and calcium reactor mainly day period.
Hello, I am from mainland China. Your coral farm is very beautiful. There is no coral farm of this level in China. I would like to forward your video to a domestic website, and the source will be marked, is it possible?
Good video my question is why didn't you give us your opinion on how long you should wait after mixing kalkwasser before you use it I usually wait a half hour but everybody seems to have different opinions on that. By the way I dose my system 24/7 with a pump using. Kalkwasser
For what it is worth to you...I mix my Kalk and wait to dose it until I have a clear solution and drip only the clear solution into my tank. This usually occurs in 24 hours in my 2 gallon jug I mix it in. I am careful not to get any of the crust that forms on the surface or the powdery stuff that settles to the bottom undisolved.
My only fear with Kalkwasser, is my pH stays relatively high (around 8.1 to 8.2), calcium remains pretty steady, around 420-440 ppm, but keeping alkalinity up in my tank is a challenge with the amount of SPS and LPS corals I have. I use a Seachem buffer that raises alkalinity, but wont raise my pH above 8.3 (as advertised), so does Kalkwasser potentially raise the pH above that 8.3?
So if I’m already dosing the three Red Sea additives for Alk, Mag, and Cal, would dosing Kalk effectively do the same thing only cheaper, or is it adding something that those three aren’t adding? The thing I like about Red Sea dosing is that it’s harder for me to screw up.
yes the kalk would add cal and alk but depending on your tank size you could be dosing alot of kalk to keep up with the demand. so I do kalk and 3 part only because my evaporation is low plus it cut my cost of buying the 3 part additives. the ph benefit alone makes with worth it to me
