For those who run kalkreactors and calcium reactors..

[untamed]

Of course, it could be something related to the Ca/Alk that your specific tank uses. It think it is fairly accurate to say that both Kalk and Ca reactors deliver both Ca/Alk in a mostly balanced way.

Holmes-Farley also says that often having one of these parameters a bit low is an indication of not enough of the balanced Kalk or Reactor...as opposed to concluding that you need to chase Ca or Alk separately.

[Delphinus]

That's just the thing, you can't chase Ca and Alk independently when you have a reactor. I am starting to appreciate the Balling method instead Or just adding the stuff manually, it's just that I can't stand wondering at 10pm at night "Did I remember to add my Ca additive before I left for work this morning? How come I can't remember?" ... That's the beauty of the reactors - once dialed in they are set-and-forget but ... OTOH dialing them in can be such a pain. I can dial in a single reactor perfectly but now adding a kalk reactor to the mix, it just seems I can't wrap my head around what's going on in there.

[Doug]

I never used the pickling lime much Tony, so cant comment on it. Seems like a lot of aquarists in the US are though. I use Ben,s kalk. Good grade and a decent price. I believe Quinn also sells it at Prairie Reef Supplies. Before that I always used ESV.

If you wish to discontinue the kalk and are happy with ph levels and the co2 reactor, then just use a calcium additive to bring the level up. It should not effect the alk. The co2 reactor then can be set to keep both at par.

I also use the kalk to precipitate the phosphate but have no idea if its doing that.

[michika]

I run both, kalk and ca reactors, although my kalk pulls water from my top-off bucket, before heading into the tank.

My system seems to have settled on 9-10dKH, and 420-460 Ca.

[Delphinus]

I have some of Ben's kalk too (another hand-me-down from someone departing the hobby). I figure I would use up the pickling lime first just because I want to get rid of what I've got first before moving onto new stuff. But at only a few tablespoons into the kalk reactor every 2 weeks it's just taking forever to use it all up. I have a similar problem with PE Mysis, through participation in group orders and some hand-me-downs I found myself sitting on about 30 packages, I've used up a lot, but still have about 20. At my current rate of consumption (I feed mysis to 3 tanks every day so it's not like I'm overly stingy - but it's about a .75" square of mysis split into 3 tanks so it's not like I'm dumping the stuff either), it takes me about 2-3 months per package to use it up. 2-3 months times 20 packages = 40 to 60 month supply I'm thinking I'm going to have to start trading some of this stuff away, it just won't hold that long..

[Delphinus]

Catherine those are rather ideal looking numbers. Man I wish I knew what I could adjust to make mine similar... I wonder if it's a case of too much calcium reactor / not enough kalk? I have the drip rate set on the kalk reactor so that it doesn't exceed evaporation. If I set the pump to 10% or higher of its rated capacity it will overtake evaporation (luckily it's a very slow trend and easy to spot after a day or so, so it's not like I'm in danger of overflowing the sump unless I get VERY inobservant..).

At my old place when I ran both I had the kalk run directly into my float valve. I switched to a metering pump so that I wouldn't have to worry about the valve clogging anymore.

Ok here's my next question, for those with kalk reactors, how often and for how long are you running your mixing pump?

[steve fedyk]

I run Ca reactor without a kalk reactor. My Ph is 8.3 to 8.1 in the tank, in reactor 6.8 to 6.6. My Ca was at 450ppm, alk was 3.43, mg was 1200. I added 200gm of Mg and the alk went up to 3.89 with the ph going up 0.12 in one hour. Mg is now 1300ppm.
I was told once that Mg was the middle of the tetertater, between Ca and alk. If one wont go up but the other will, check your Mg level. I don't know if this is true or not, but it worked for me.

[Delphinus]

I'll have to test Mg. It's surely too low, it's been a few weeks since I last tested. I want to find a solid based Mg supplement I can run in my reactor because the liquid Kent stuff I tried last month didn't last me very long, I don't think that will be a long-term economical solution.

My Salifert Alk test kit finally finished on me, so I went and bought an Elos. The Elos measures in dKH instead of meq/l. It tells me my Alk is 12dKH so 12/2.8 = 4.29ish meq/l.

Yeah, time to get on that Mg and see if that's part of the issue here I guess.