Switched from a reactor to 2-part dosing-Interesting results

[flyingphish]

chicago: they are two different products that raise your alk. the diff is soda will lower ph and bionic part 2 will raise ph. the problem with bionic it raises it fast and high, as the soda lowers it slow and low.

definately use baking soda for any alk increase. dont use the bionic for alk increase, calcium yes. i dont bake my arm and hammer soda, just a pinch or two in a cup mixed with tank water.

rule of thumb for the soda...watch your ph meter...as you add the mixed soda the ph will drop<---------for every .04 drop in ph, you get a .5 meq increase in alk. this is about as much of an increase you want to do at once...

after you get alk set, i like 3.0 meq, adjust calcium to 420ish (use bionic part 1 if you like) and then maintain with kalk drip or bionic two part system...

[Chicago]

that is the plan... thanks

[DrBDC]

You cannot use pH for measuring alk addition from baking soda. Use the reef chemistry calculator.

[tanya72806]

i recently got rid of my JS1 and went to randy's 2 part and I am EXTREMELY happy with the switch. I bake my baking soda and because of that it keeps my PH stable, without it my pH drops.

[flyingphish]

hi doc, i beg to differ. i do it all the time. it works great.

i quote randy:

"Adding a buffer is a very poor way to control high pH. The best option in this regard is to add straight baking soda, which only slightly lowers pH and provides a large boost to alkalinity (Figure 12). I showed experimentally in a previous article that adding enough baking soda to lower pH in artificial seawater by 0.04 pH units raised alkalinity by 0.5 meq/L (1.4 dKH)."

[flyingphish]

robert hunter is your famous poet.

god i miss that band.

[DrBDC]

That is an approximate though. It depends somewhat on the starting pH. i.e. if you are under 8.0 it would raise the pH.

If you are already determining how much alk increase you need, why not just use the exact amount from the calculator?

[tanya72806]

i dont get what your saying i bake mine to keep mine from lowering and like in his post thats for high PH

[DrBDC]

Baking soda will point the pH towards 8.0. If you are under it, then it will raise it, if over then it will lower it.

If you bake your baking soda, it will always raise it, at least in any pH range the tank will be.

[tanya72806]

lol thats wata i was saying but I bake mine since mine is low and it keeps mine steady at 8.1

[flyingphish]

ok let me do a little chemistry experiment for you guys:

ph reading on my tank right now = 7.96 (using freshly calibrated neptune aquacontroller probe using #7 and #10 solution).

test alk...2.86 meq

ok i add couple pinches of unbaked soda to tank.

ph decreases to 7.94

retest alk...3.1 meq

thus: ph drops .02 alk increase .24

pretty accurate and far from an approximation. like i said ive been doing it like this and i like the fact that its real time...not calculated.

as for the ph increasing on the other side of 8? dont you mean 7? i thought 7 was neutral acid/base...? Maybe my probe is off and its really above 8.0 and not 7.96? kinda close to 8.0 to do the experiment with confidence, but that is if 8 is the number or is it 7?

[GQuinn]

Big E - Hows this switch working out for you?

Gary

[Big E]

Gary,

It's been great.........I'm very happy with it so far.

[gnikoli]

I always liked the idea of calcium reactors because I figured they would add all the minor elements that are probably not found in synthetic mixes (can't see how they can put everything in there), but keeping effluent flow contant is a real pain with my unit and this thread has taught me to be concerned about phosphate in reactor media. Lets assume that one can do an equally good job of maintaining alkalinity, calcium and pH with either method and forget about cost and relative convenience, on a strictly biological and coral health level, can 2-part additives along with a little aragonite substrate satisfy all of a coral's needs?

[reefdood]

I make the two part with Kent's Turbo Calcium(aquarium grade ), and Arm and Hammer baking soda(food grade). I'm pretty sure mine is as pure as any two part sitting on a shelf.

Only thing I have been thinking about is if I'm adding different amounts of the two parts, am I still ionicly balanced? Does it even matter though with 25% weekly waterchanges?

Hell I use it with my IO to make WC water parameters stable with my tank. Can't do that with a reactor.

[jdieck]

Big E:
I am glad the switch is working for you, I wish I would be able to do it but my consumption is so high it will be impossible. I add 3.5 gal of saturated Kalk mix per day and dissolve over 60 pounds of media per year.
In any case to really calculate how much Phosphate the media was adding:

0.06 ppm on 30 ml/min is equivalent to adding 0.0018 milligrams of Phosphate per minute (.06 mg/lt x 30 ml/min / 1000 ml/lt)
That will be 2.59 mg of Phosphate per day. That is equivalent to 0.0057 ppm per day (2.59mg / 120 gal / 3.7856 lts/gal)

at 0.006 ppm per day addition that seems way lower than what one could add in the way of food and fish waste.

By the way. Although Phosphate concentration on the media changes from batch to bath I have never tested effluent Phophsate on ARM at higher than 0.02 to 0.03 ppm with Hanna Colorimeter.
As a comparison I soak the Activated Carbon overnight, when I test the soak water on the lowest phosphate brands (Seachem, TLF, Black Diamond) I get 8 ppm so that certainly is another potential source for phosphate that is why I recommend to soak it overnight so part of it can be leached out.

[jnfallon]

This is a goo dthread, and glad Jose found it too. Y'all need to read up over at the reef chemistry forum.

Funny, I posted up there a week ago that I was ditching my cal rx and going strictly 2-part. Randy's formula is so cheap that there's no reason to buy/tinker with a reactor anymore.

Even at my rates of depletion, where I need to dose about 1 liter of each/day it will cost under $10/mo in supplies, and I can mix 5 gallons and dose with a peristaltic pump off ebay for $100.

Almost seems to good to be true.

BTW, Reefduud, Turbo calcium IS dowflake. Same stuff from what I understand. More posted upstairs at randy's place.

[jdieck]

Originally posted by jnfallon
BTW, Reefduud, Turbo calcium IS dowflake. Same stuff from what I understand. More posted upstairs at randy's place.

They are both Calcium Chloride with one difference. Dow flake is Calcium Chloride Dihydrate wile Turbo Calcium is Anhydrous.
The difference means only that Dow flake has two water molecules per molecule of Chloride which will make it less concentrated 80 to 85% compared to TurboCalcium 94 to 97%
In other words by weight you need less turbo calcium than Dow Flake to achieve the same concentration in the solution.

In a 100 gal system to increase Ca by 50 ppm you will need 69.4 grams of Dow Flake or 52.6 grams of Turbo Calcium, the difference is basically the weight of water molecules added with the Dowflake.

[Big E]

jdieck,

Thanks for the math calculations. Shouldn't it be..........

.06mg/lt x30 ml/min x 1440 /1000 = 2.59

Could you explain the second calculations? Why does the total volume of the system matter? Btw, total volume is 200g as stated in my original post. I understand it would have less effect on a larger volume of water, but it doesn't change the amount of phosphate that is being added each day.

Carbon- I've never been a carbon user. One of the reasons I don't use carbon is phosphate leaching. Imo, it's not worth the bother for what it does. The results always seemed short term.

I believe that my system is a low consumption user of cac/alk & will always be this way as I'm not one to load the tank wall to wall with corals. I could see where it may not work for others.
I also can assume some reactor users are adding a lot more phoshate than I am....... melting more media & higher effluent levels.

Thanks for the other data point on the ARM. No question there are variations. I'd like to hear more on this from others & about different medias.

Math aside, there is a lot less algae growth than ever before since I have been doing this. I can go 10 days or so before there's a film on the front pane. Before I would see a film after 2 days. I'm happy with the way the corals have reacted color wise.
I haven't seen any difference in growth over the 2+ month time....initially there was a spurt.

I stated early on this is nothing earth shattering or new, but it has struck a balance in my system that I'm happy with.

[jdieck]

Originally posted by Big E
jdieck,

Thanks for the math calculations. Shouldn't it be..........

.06mg/lt x30 ml/min x 1440 /1000 = 2.59

Yes that is the net weight in milligrams of phosphates added in one day.

Could you explain the second calculations? Why does the total volume of the system matter? Btw, total volume is 200g as stated in my original post. I understand it would have less effect on a larger volume of water, but it doesn't change the amount of phosphate that is being added each day.
When you add the effluent to the tank it gets diluted by the total amount of water. So if you add 2.59 milligrams of Phosphate to 757 liters of tank water(200 gal) your phosphate reading in ppm (milligrams per liter) will be 2.59 /757 or 0.0034 ppm.
It is similar to the case if you add one liter of salt water at 1.025 to a tank full of RO/DI the final salinity willnot be anywhere near 1.025

[Big E]

Okay, thats what I thought........obviously more water less effect.

Not sure how all the math figures in but I'm reading 0 on the hanna now whereas I was always .02 with the reactor.

Another thing to consider is that my skimmer can export phospate in detritus,food, & fish poo particles. It's not going to export the phosphate that is being entered from the reactor.
Granted, it could export some bacteria that is consuming phosphate, but I would think the majority of phosphate coming from the reator isn't being skimmed.

[Bullredchaser]

I may be alone but I believe commercial 2 parts like Bionic gets such high reports of good growth and color is not just the calcium,alkalinity,and magnesium they have but the addition of trace elements like flouride,potasium,vanadate,iron,iodine,etc etc which most have been reported by the Germans to control or help color.You dont get that with a Randys 2 part.You could by the trace elements seperately but then where would the savings be?

[jdieck]

Originally posted by Big E
Okay, thats what I thought........obviously more water less effect.

Not sure how all the math figures in but I'm reading 0 on the hanna now whereas I was always .02 with the reactor.

Another thing to consider is that my skimmer can export phospate in detritus,food, & fish poo particles. It's not going to export the phosphate that is being entered from the reactor.
Granted, it could export some bacteria that is consuming phosphate, but I would think the majority of phosphate coming from the reator isn't being skimmed.

Yes having removed your reactor there could be another factors. Skimming can remove dissolved phosphates also specially if skimming wet foam. In any case there can be more effect, your skimmer function might have improved without the effluent, the phosphate in the effluent might have been higher than measured, the media might have contained othere non measurable elements etc. In my opinion, more than the reduction of phosphates I think the reduction in the algae level has more to do with the reduction of dissolved CO2 in the water by removing the reactor.

[jnfallon]

Originally posted by Bullredchaser
I may be alone but I believe commercial 2 parts like Bionic gets such high reports of good growth and color is not just the calcium,alkalinity,and magnesium they have but the addition of trace elements like flouride,potasium,vanadate,iron,iodine,etc etc which most have been reported by the Germans to control or help color.You dont get that with a Randys 2 part.You could by the trace elements seperately but then where would the savings be?

Retail 2-part would cost me between $250-300/mo. Randy's 2-part would cost me $10. That's a lot of $ for supplements that have never been proven to help.

[scottfarcuz]

Bump...I'm curious how this has done on Ed's tank. I saw his tank last winter, and he had some nice pcs