ATO water ?

[donkey77]

i have a 5 gallon bucket that holds my fresh water ato because i fill it every 4 or 5 days should i throw some Kalkwasser in it, or any other ideas

[whatcaneyedo]

Read this and decide for yourself

The Degradation of Limewater (Kalkwasser) in Air
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-0...ture/index.htm

[donkey77]

didnt work

[Madreefer]

No. You want kalk water in your tank and not the actual powder. You want the kalk powder to mix with the RO and if your just using a 5G bucket you'll have to have a powerhead running in there constantly so the kalk powder doesn't settle. PIA from my past experience trying it that way. Only thing added to my top up water is mg but that's a whole different topic.

[whatcaneyedo]

Sorry about that, this link should work. Is your ATO managed by a pump, a float valve or some other mechanism. The reason I ask is because I have had problems with float valves (not to be confused with float switches) plugging up with kalkwasser.

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-05/rhf/feature/index.htm

[mike31154]

I dose baked baking soda, epsom salts & alk thru my top off container occasionally with no visible ill effects. Must admit I don't check these parameters that often & trust my water changes to keep things more or less balanced. I don't have that many valuable sps pieces either though, so I can get away with being less precise with dosing. My top off system is a glass wine carboy pressurized by a small air pump on a timer. You could say this is a closed reservoir & not prone to the CO2 issue described in the reefkeeping article, but by pressurizing it with ambient air I may actually be promoting the process. In any case, instead of trying to mix whatever I'm dosing to the maximum strength, I'll only add a little, so I don't get precipitation, caking, lumping etc. The mechanical float valve on the rim of my tank has been in service for 6+ years & has never clogged. This is probably because I don't add supplements to every top off tank & I reckon one container full of pure RODI water dissolves anything that may clog it on the way through. Every few water changes I do pull the valve & inspect it, since it tends to collect algae which I need to clean off.