purple up enough for calcium?

[marie]

Originally Posted by bv_reefer

about what drip rate do you set it at, or in other words how much solution would you drip for a 40 gallon?

The kalk that you drip will replace the water that evaporates. How much water do you evaporate in a 24hr period?

I would start out with a light dose of kalk, say 1tsp of kalk per gal of water and try to time the drips of the kalk to top up your tank by morning. Test your alk and if it has dropped then you need to make a stronger solution of kalk, if the alk has gone up then you need to add less kalk to the water the next night.
To get the right amount (unless someone else knows of an easier way ) it is going to take some fiddling and lots of testing.
While going through this stage I never bothered testing cal until I was sure I had alk stable. Once I figured out how much kalk I needed to keep alk stable, I checked the cal to make sure it was inline (it saves money on test kits).

By dripping at night when the ph is lower you lessen the impact of the higher ph. You will probably notice the ph of your tank going up a bit overall anyway but as long as your not just dumping the kalk water into your tank then small ph blips shouldn't be anything to worry about