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Old 12/29/2007, 12:17 AM
tmz tmz is offline
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Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: West Seneca NY
Posts: 1,935
There are several alternatives. The following are two that I have used.
Gravity fed drip from a still resevoir. A five gallon salt buckett with an outlet about an inch and a half off the bottom ( rigid airline tubing firmly fitted in a small drilled hole glued around the edges on the outside with Plumber's Goop) is used as a still resevoir. A length of flexible airline tubing is fitted over the protruding rigid tube and a plastic airline valve on the other end of the flexible tubing provides a control for the drip rate. The buckett is filled with saturated limewater( 2tsps per gallon of ro/di water) and stirred vigorouslyly at least two hours before dosing to allow impurities to precipitate out.The bluckett is tightly covered to prevent a lot of interaction with the air which will allow the limewater to interact with CO2 and form unuseable carbonate.The buckett is placed above the sump and the limewater is dripped at night into a high flow area since it's high ph (12.5) will offset the normal nightime ph drop in a reeef aquarium. My 400g system used about 4 gallons a night for top off( over a 6 hour period) so I filled this buckett and stirred once a day. It is important not to dose too much limewater in a short period of time or you can spike ph and cause a precipitation event. Aproximately one quart per hundred gallons in an hour is pretty safe.

Dosing pump and still resevoir. I use a 30gallon Brute garbage can and fill it every five or six days with saturated limewater. I stir it vigoruoiusly cover it and dose it with a liter meter dosing pump. The limewater loses very little strength over the course of the week withourt stirring as long as there is a little extra lime at the bottom of the barrel.

Care should be take to avoid dosing the slurry on the bottom of the reservoir, since it contains precipitated impurities. it may also contain unused lime wihich can be stirred into solution the next time you mix.
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Tom