[titus]

Hello,

Some good advices given here. Here's mine:

1) Instant Ocean is cheaper than Kent, at least from what I've seen here. Both are pretty much the standard salt mix you should use. However, for whatever stupid reason, my batch of Kent salt provides a surprisingly low reading of calcium level, confirmed by both Salifert and Hagen's test kits. Weird. :confused:

2) A good advice on this one and remember this. Alkalinity and calcium level are backwards. What I mean by this is if your water chemistry is not balanced, too much of one will cause the other to decline. One mistake easy for new comers to make is to keep dosing alkanlinity buffer when they see their pH low, causing the calcium level to drop further and further down. What really is the cause can be due to in-sufficient gas exchange and/or during night time when the lights are out. You need to build both up gradually.

3) You may dose Kalk when you begin loading your system. Generally if you change your water on a regular basis and your stocking level, relative to your water gallonage is low, you probably don't need to dose much if at all. But when you begin to start loading your system with corals, your must dose supplements or Kalk or better yet get a ca reactor. Kalk can only give you so much because of the low evaporation rate up here in Canada.

4) Like Brad said drip some vinegar into your Kalk solution and that would help. Kalk solution has an extreme high pH (close to 12?) and the extra vinegar helps the bateria in your system to release more CO2, compensating in a way for the high pH.