New to Kalkwasser

[Giovanni]

I am moving to kalkwasser for my 400g system. I have 1.4 liters of evaporation a day that I replace via timed control of RODI over a 24hr period. I have built a DIY stirrer from a 5 gallon bucket and old protein skimmer cleaner. It is not air tight but not open topped either. It will hold about 3 gallons of kalkwasser. I plan to do the following. Please let me know what you think.

-Once per 24hr period top off 5g stirrer instead of tank with RODI. This will take about 9 minutes.
-Have the stirrer start and run for 30 minutes at same time.
-Thirty minutes after stirrer stops, use dosing pump to top off tank over the next 23hrs from the Kalkwasser bucket.
-Repeat

[bertoni]

That sounds reasonable to me, although the amount of evaporation is so low that I don't think that the Kalk will have much effect. 1.4 L per day is a very small amount of Kalk.

[Giovanni]

That sounds reasonable to me, although the amount of evaporation is so low that I don't think that the Kalk will have much effect. 1.4 L per day is a very small amount of Kalk.

Thanks for the feedback. In the summer when my tank heats up, I use a fan for evaporative cooling and it more than triples my evaporation. Also my Calcium demand is low.

[bertoni]

Okay, that makes sense. :) Good luck!

[jayball]

Personally I would give it another 15-30 minutes of settling time. After I mix up a new batch I notice there is still some kalk in suspension after 30 minutes.

[DiscusHeckel]

I give at least 90 minutes.

[Coelli]

I give at least 90 minutes.

Same here, minimum of an hour but longer if the sump level still looks good. Kalk has made a big difference in my tank!

[DiscusHeckel]

Kalk has made a big difference in my tank!

Same here. In my case, if the drop rate of the effluent (from Deltec KM 500 kalk stirrer) is about 5 ml / minute (about one drop per second), then pH remains more or less constant when lights are off. I dose between 1 am and 1 pm non-stop. The full light cycle begins after 2.30 pm.

[Giovanni]

So you only dose during the dark cycle and mix during the light cycle?

[m3lacoste]

I'm following this and keep us updated on how this goes. I may go the kalk stirrer route too. I had a problem using Kalk in my top off with the sludge accidentally being pumped into the tank but I wasn't using a kalk stirrer. I think next time I will mix 5 gallons at a time and add the clear liquid instead of adding kalk powder directly to my ato reservoir. I would mix in my ato reservoir, wait for it to mix/settle, then turn my pump back on after the liquid was clear. It worked perfect until my reservoir level got so low it pumped the sludge directly into my tank.

[Coelli]

I built an eggcrate platform for the pump to sit on, just to be safe.

[DiscusHeckel]

So you only dose during the dark cycle and mix during the light cycle?

Yes, I dose during the dark cycle, but I mix 24/7 as per the instructions of my kalkstirrer.

[Giovanni]

So the deltec stir motor is made to run 24/7? No worries with slurry getting dosed?

[DiscusHeckel]

So the deltec stir motor is made to run 24/7? No worries with slurry getting dosed?

None whatsoever. The stirrer's arm rotates very slowly. What makes slurry getting dosed is if you pump too much water inside the stirrer's chamber. My stirrer's effluent rate is about 5 ml / minute. With this rate of dosing, 90% of the chamber remains crystal clear.

[Giovanni]

DiscusHeckel,

How do you feed your stirrer?

[DiscusHeckel]

So the deltec stir motor is made to run 24/7? No worries with slurry getting dosed?

I have taken some photos for you to illustrate what the stirrer's body (aka chamber) looks like before and during operation:

This photo shows the reaction chamber shortly after I mixed 150 gr of calcium hydroxide with several litres of RODI:

http://i444.photobucket.com/albums/qq165/mbozcan/P1060852_zpsiwymklku.jpg

This photo shows how the settled limewater looks like. The clear supernatant solution is ready to dose:

http://i444.photobucket.com/albums/qq165/mbozcan/P1060870_zpsxrpamtbp.jpg

The following two photos show how the calcium hydroxide slurry and the clear supernatant respond once the feeder pump starts to feed RODI to the reactor:

http://i444.photobucket.com/albums/qq165/mbozcan/P1060871_zpsrzmemv64.jpg

http://i444.photobucket.com/albums/qq165/mbozcan/P1060872_zpsthyaiigg.jpg


As you can see there is hardy any cloudiness in the supernatant solution as a result of dosing. When the photo was taken two days ago the flow rate was about 5 ml / minutes. I have increased the flow rate to 8 ml /minutes since then.

DiscusHeckel,

How do you feed your stirrer?

There are different ways to feed a stirrer, e.g. directly from an RODI device, ATO, or peristaltic pump, etc.

I am using a normal aquarium pump, which is rated as 200 l / hour. I have purchased a T-piece (Aqua Medic) to feed the reactor as shown in the picture below. I use the reactor's inlet valve to fine tune the input rate and ultimately the flow rate of the effluent.

The feeder pump and the plumbing, which consists of a T-piece and a water flow regulator that regulates how much water should be diverted to the reactor, are placed in my ATO container, which also houses my Tunze Osmolator's feeder pump as shown below:

http://i444.photobucket.com/albums/qq165/mbozcan/IMG_0583_zpsvhresmxl.jpg

I would have preferred to use a peristaltic pump, but decided not to spend any more money after spending quite a bit on the stirrer. I simply improvised utilising my existing tools.

Finally, please note that I had trial runs with this set up prior to filling the reactor with calcium hydroxide. If you experiment with the effluent flow rates once the reactor is full of calcium hydroxide , there is a high possibility that you will disturb the slurry and will dump undissolved lime into your tank water.

[Ironwood]

Nice job!