calcium adjustmnet

[cabin]

I've been reading your articles on calcium/alkalinity, among them the one on correcting problems. My tank appears to be in what you call zone 3, with calcium of 220 and alkalinity of 3.5 meq/l. The tank is four months old and lightly stocked at this point. I used the online calculator link to determine how much calcium to add to get things in balance before starting a regular kalkwasser supplementation program. Unfortunately I didn't notice that link was for dry quantities of calcium, and I purchased a bottle of Kent Marine's Liquid Calcium online. Now that it has come, I see it is only 10 % calcium. The directions call for adding at most 1 tsp per 50 gallons per day. That seems like an awfully ineffective dosing level for correcting a problem. Do you have any suggestions for how I should dose this stuff, or should I give up on it and go buy a powdered supplement? I did also buy the kalkwasser, should I go ahead and start using that in the meantime? Thank you for your assistance, this seems fairly complicated and I'm afraid to act without advice.

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Those directions are for maintanance, not adjustments. You can add all that you need to make the appropriate adjustment. It is the same calcium chloride, just dissolved in water for you.

Since The Liquid Calcium is about 100,000 ppm Ca++, and you need to raise calcium by 200 ppm, your looking at adding about 200/100,000 = 1/500th of the tank volume.