limewater
 

anyone does this into their tanks? And how do you dose it? Thanks.

buy mrs. wages picling lime at your grocery store. Mix 1 cup of it per gallon of top off water.

best used with an auto top off

sweet, thanks for helpin out with that.

I recently spoke to a Seachem Rep about using Limewater compared to Reef Advantage Calcium ...

"Kalkwasser is a difficult supplement to get right. It will increase your pH. But a high pH encourages precipitation. So usually your magnesium level drops. Magnesium is what keeps your calcium and alkalinity from precipitating out at normal levels. It can also precipitate phosphates, but you will lose calcium. If you drip kalkwasser at night if can combine with CO2 (provided you have enough) and create alkalinity. So it does have the potential to be a unitary supplement. Another problem that occurs is that you need to evaporate enough water so that you can drip enough Kalkwasser. Kalkwasser only raises your calcium a small amount 1 gallon of Kalkwasser added to 40 gallons of water will only raise your calcium 24 mg/L. So as you can see there are many pros and cons to using kalkwasser. Perhaps a few tests on your tank will help you to see how you could improve this system. I would recommend magnesium, calcium, and alkalinity."

Personally I use Reef Salt, Reef Buffer, & Reef Advantage Calcium for LR results that look like this ...
[IMG]http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c15/chocolateblnt/CoralineLiveRock.jpg[/IMG]

Reef Salt will help you start out with the correct buffer, Reef Buffer will bring pH up to 8.3 and raise alkalinity and Reef Advantage Calcium is a ionic calcium supplement that raises your calcium levels quickly along with proportionate amounts of magnesium and strontium.

[QUOTE][i]<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7258773#post7258773 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by ctsieber [/i]
[B]buy mrs. wages picling lime at your grocery store. Mix 1 cup of it per gallon of top off water.

best used with an auto top off [/B][/QUOTE]

It is supposed to be 1 or 2 tablespoons per gallon. One cup is 16 tablespoons, you will be wasting a lot of lime as that will never dissolve in a gallon of water.

--Ray

yeah I was reading that raynist, was actually going to post that. chocolateblnt, i was thinkin of just using limewater as my top off water that runs on a floatswitch, it runs thuout the day coming on for less than a minute. Its connected to a 1 gal jug ( I believe) and that usually runs dry after 4 days.

heres a link to a vidio that explains how to mix and dose.

[url]http://www.talkingreef.com/forums/showthread.php?t=674[/url]

GLXtrix ... I use Reef Advantage Calcium in my top off as well :) I guess I see more con's in limewater than pro's ... good luck

by the way here's my top off system
[IMG]http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c15/chocolateblnt/topofffinish.jpg[/IMG]

yeah I have a top off similar to that, except i use a battery powered air pump. Either way, does the same thing. so this Reef Advantage Calcium you speak of, you jsut add what ever amount is necessary to your top off? How do you figure what your calcium depleation is, arent you afraid of adding too much calcium?

I simply brought my calcium level to 420 mg/l, waited the period of how long it takes for my 5 gallon jug to empty which is 2 weeks* without adding calcium, calculated depletion and now I simply add the proper amount of R.A.C. every time I fill up my jug with RO ... since I haven't added/deducted inhabitants my calcium depletion stays regular. This is also more cost effective, $10 bucks does the calcium trick and will treat 2000 gallons. Never have to mix junk etc...

Everyone should worry about over dosing calcium because if you overdose then you're alkalinity will drop. If that happens you will actually precipitate out your calcium as calcium carbonate (Ca+). If you can't keep calcium and alk steady then the problem is magnesium interfering. But with Kalkwasser you not only have to worry about overdosing calcium but also overshooting pH. This is because carbonate can change into bicarbonate and vice versa... we want Ca++ which is a more readily available calcium which corals and other stuff can intake without expending a lot of energy to do so.

*once again from my previous post if you're not evaporating enough to supplement through kalkwasser then your kalkwasser is useless. I was evaporating enough however I plan on stocking the tank heavily with corals and once that happens I probably won't be. I went through this before when deciding on top-off system whether to go kalkwasser or just simple top off with calcium supplement.

is there some calculator somewhere that you can figure out how much calcium to add when it;s at a certain level?

Sure it's on SeaChem's website ... just click on Dosage Calculator from this Page ...

[url]http://seachem.com/products/reef.html[/url]

it also tells you on the back of the bottle ... you can find that on their website as well!

They've made Life soooo easy with that Flash Calculator :P

lol, thanks

Another benefit from using Reef Advantage Calcium is it provides the proportionate amount of Strontium ... which Randy Holmes doesn't recommend dosing on your own because it doesn't take much to overdose. Simply using quality salts and quality calcium will naturally keep your strontium levels where they should be; testing your aquarium is recommended to ensure this. RAC also provides magnesium at proportionate amounts ensuring balance between calcium and alkalinity ... magnesium is often the deficiency causing a mis-balance between the two.

bumpin' for Maxcab