Dosing CA & Dkh through top off water

[jarretk1]

I moved everything, including water and sand after washing it thourougly over from a 90 down to a 38 gallon. The 38 has been set up for a month but I got a new job that is going to require me to be halfway across the country from my tank for around 6-8 weeks. My roommate has been watching me take care of the tank for the last month but want to make the process of watching my tank as easy as possible. So far I have determine that I evaporate 4 cups a day, .5 dkH, and 10ppm of calcium a day. I feed my clowns every other day, anemone's once a week, and dose every other day. A bit over 2 gallons of top off water would satisfy the evaporation for around 10 days so is there any way to make dosing easy on my roommate because I was thinking he could just add the calcium and dkH to the top off bucket to last the entire 10 days. He can run tests once a week without problem and if something is wrong I can have a reefer friend come help. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated I just don't have the funds to go spend $250 on dosing pumps, but I could swing $50 bucks or so on a few tom aquatic dosing pumps if they are any good. So please give me any suggestion on making it easy for my roommate and also if you think tom aquatic dosing pumps would work for my situation. Thanks everyone.

[FullBoreReefer]

I tried the process your thinking of years ago. My top off water clouded by only adding a small amount of 2 part. I didnt even use that water because it made me nervous so I dumped it, cleaned the bucket, and refilled with the normal rodi water. Fortunately for my tank I sucked it up and spent the $160 on two dosers and havent looked back. Maybe it was something I did but i just didnt feel comfortable with it. I know sometimes its hard to spend or scrape up the money for the extra parts, if you cant, just teach him how to dose until you can...

[benjc]

The toms pumps are too fast and too imprecise, plus your evaporation rate will likely fluctuate through the year. Also, the two-part needs to be in seperate containers, if you could store them as a single solution, it would be one-part. I'd look into adding kalk to your tipoff water as an effective and economical alternative.

[disc1]

The only way to do both calcium and alkalinity through your top off is with kalk. If you try that with two part you'll just make sand in your top off water and you won't get anything into the tank.

[jarretk1]

Looks like dosing pumps might be the way to go. After my training I will be traveling a lot (4 days gone, 4 days home) so I assume that dosing pumps would be a better option in that situation over kalk. If that is the case then I will start browsing the DFW marine aquarium society forums and start looking for some used dosing pumps if not then bite the bullet and probably order a couple BRS dosers.

[nlgill13]

It is best if you have both....dosing will bring you levels back into check and kalk will stabilize those levels so you don't have to constantly dose 2 part.

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