Lazy Reefkeeper needs more calcium.

[anathema]

I have a 40G stretch hex with a 20G sump. DSB, lots of rock, mag 9.5 return through a sea swirl and a seio on a wave timer to help that out. Tank is skimmerless, and I don't really test for anything. If something seems out of the ordinary I do large changes with store purchased NSW. I use a minimal equipment approach to reefkeeping, and prefer to keep things as natural as possible. This tank has been running for about 2.5 years now, and I've never been able to keep up with calcium. I've decided to put some effort into solving this problem, but there are some challenges.

1: The tank is in the living room, and there isn't much room around/behind/under it for any kind of reactor/CO2 setup. I'd rather keep the simple, clean look as well.

2: I work away from home a lot. I am often gone for up to 2 weeks at a time. Whatever system I implement CANNOT need constant tweaking, care, or oversight. It just isn't a working piece of equipment if I have to touch it more than once a month.

As my montiporas grow larger, as well as my clams, I notice that some of the other SPS, mostly acros, aren't doing so well. I place most of this blame on low calcium, since my coralline algae growth is at a standstill also. I need to find a way to add more calcium.

My current calcium supplementation comes in the form of automatic kalk top off. I have two part, but since I am not on any set work schedule I found that doing random, manual, two part supplementation did more harm than good. While I supplemented irregularly, the SPS responded by coloring up, growing faster, but with the added problem that whenever I went away for any period of time I lost frags. Whenever I had to stop supplementing, the downswing in CA would cause individual corals to bleach out and often not recover.

I decided last year to simply run at a low calcium level, and have it be a steady constant, than to have it change rapidly.

Does anyone have any better ideas?