Switched To Limewater

[NCC-1701]

OK I have switched to lime water and have some questions:

1) I mixed the lime water at saturation (two teaspoons per gallon) and my Ca has increased from 400 to 405 and the alk has increased from 8.0 to 9.2 over the last two days. So my question is how much Mrs Wages should I use per gallon to maintain the current levels?

2) I need to increase my calcium a little (420 to 430), so I planned to get the readings stable with lime water first, then add additional CA via the dow flake that I have left to get into the target range on the CA. Is this a good plan?

3) I wanted to start boosting my salt mix with calcium and Mg. I plan to use the anhydrous calcium choride. How much of this should I plan on using in a 44 gallon mix?

4) Also how much mag flake should I add to each 44 galon batch?

[spazthecat]

Hi,

#1 - How are you dosing? via a reactor or just a big container with the kalk mixed in? I would stick with 2 tsp per gallon. That is the amount that is needed to saturate the water. You might even need to cut back a bit depending on your tank. I only use 1 tsp per gallon because the pH gets too high if I use 2 tsp and I keep mostly soft corals so the Ca demand isn't that high.

#2 - I think this sounds OK. You are correct in using the dowflake to boost calcium. You can't really do that with limewater. Limewater will maintain well but it is hard to boost calcium with it.

#3 & 4 - You will need to mix up a batch and then measure the Mg and Ca to see where you are at. Then you can use this web site to calculate how much of each to add to get to the levels you want.http://home.comcast.net/~jdieck1/chem_calc3.html

Andy

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I mixed the lime water at saturation (two teaspoons per gallon) and my Ca has increased from 400 to 405 and the alk has increased from 8.0 to 9.2 over the last two days. So my question is how much Mrs Wages should I use per gallon to maintain the current levels?


Trial and error over time is the only way to know the exact dose you need.