kal water ppm

[joselastra]

why does my freshly made kalk water test 190-200ppm on my tds meter?

before the kalk is added to the container the tds tests 1ppm, after the kalk is added to the container they shoot to 194, why????

[demonsp]

I think the TDS meter is for an un mixed water source. After you mix salt its no longer a viable device for testing.You need the proper SW test kit to measure calcium.

[bertoni]

The TDS meter is intended to measure ionic content. Kalk adds a lot of ions.

[joselastra]

so its should be fine to still use the mix then? only reason i ask is bc i battled a long fight w/ hair algae, so now i test all water going into tank w/ my TDS. just dont want to digress to where i was.

[bertoni]

It should be okay.

[rbursek]

Any pure water once you add something to it will have dissolved solids

[joselastra]

thank you.

[jdieck]

Actually 194 is a rather low reading, fully saturated Kalk shall read between 5,500 and 6,500 ppm (conductivity around 10.3 ms/cm), the issue is that the suspended particle matter skews the reading by a lot. I ran a series of tests using an in line TDS at the output of my Kalk reactor to determine when to refill. I found that although the reading is not accurate it still changes with the concentration. When fresh Kalk is added to the reactor, the output water reads around 450 ppm, once the concentration drops below 380 it is time to refill.