what to dose? ESV Bionic or Kalkwasser

[connecticut cichlids]

what's better?...is there any advantage of dosing one over the other?. or dosing both? :confused:

[tomason]

B-Ionic is more expensive, but doesn't really affect pH when it's dosed like kalkwasser does (that's why many people dose it at night to keep the pH of the tank from dropping). For large SPS tanks, B-Ionic gets really expensive.

Kalkwasser is easier to automate, simply because it's not 2-part. Another advantage of kalk is that if you use tap water, the high pH (or whatever it is) causes heavy metals to precipitate out of the water so they don't get added to your tank.

Because kalk can only be mix with freshwater, you're limited in the amount you can dose to the amount of water you evaporate. If you need more alk/calc than that, then you have to do B-Ionic or a calcium reactor too. I've seen a lot of people to do kalk + something else.

The cheapest way to do kalk is to get a can of food-grade pickling lime. It's a lot cheaper than the "official" kalkwasser powder you can get for aquariums.

-Tom