Kalk

[Tim Marvin]

For anyone interested I did a little experiment. I added 4 cups of Kalk solution to a 30 gallon tank (just poured it in). The PH jumped from 8.4 to 9.0 in seconds. Everything is doing fine but the tank is sparsely populated. This is why you drip the kalk slowly especially if you have delicate critters. The water is slightly cloudy so you can imagine the spike if you are dumping a bunch in. I have heard people say their tank looks like milk........... :shock:

[witecap4u]

Now what brand of Kalk mix did you use. The red sea stuff reverses the polarity, and is used when needed IIRC.

[Tim Marvin]

Kent, I have never tried red sea.

[robertpower3]

4 cups!!!!!!!!! **** i thought you were suppose to mix a rounded teaspoon for every gallon. That seems like a whole lot of kalk

[robertpower3]

Oh I just re read I thought you meant four cups of kalk in the powder form. My bad. Your still crazy :lol:

[Tim Marvin]

I mixed 3 tablespoons Kalk in 5 gallons of water. I used 4 cups from that solution. I use this tank for experimenting. Hopefully this little experiment will help someone at a later date. It may be only one test, but at least it is something to go by. The PH was 8.7 today at 2pm. Everything is still looking good, in fact the brain appears to be open larger than usual. There is very little livestock in this tank and certainly nothing that can't be easily replaced because most of it is fragged of the original colonies that I still have.
So it appears you can dump in a good amount of kalk solution in with little adverse effects. I don't recommend it and dripping is still the BEST method! So according to this data it would appear you could add like 16 cups solution in a 120 gallon tank. I beleive 16 cups is 1 gallon from what I remember. Soooooo in my theory you could pour 1 gallon of solution into a 120 gallon tank by accident and probably be fine if most of your animals are fairly hardy. So for those of you that accidentally put your drip on too fast and forget it, or your top off gets stuck on and dumps in a gallon of kalk solution don't do anything rash. Do a normal water change and don't panic......Just my opinion though.

[Tim Marvin]

By the way, I would NEVER intentionally do this to my show tank....

[Texreefer]

Tim, i have seen your show tank and no one in their right mind would do that to that kind of tank,,, it is interesting though that such delicate creatures can withstand such a wide variety of conditions.

[Tim Marvin]

this tank has also run from 74 degrees to 96 degrees. No Losses, but it has only hardy critters. It sustained 96 for a day and a half. I didn't do anything radical like ice it down, just added a fan.

[Richard]

Tim, sounds like a very aggressive version of Anthony Calfo's "Slurry Method". The slurry method is just using about 1/16 tspn kalk to a cup or so of cold di/ro water and then just pouring it in the tank - not the sump.
I've tried this and it had no effect on the ph of my 140. I even went to using around 1/8 tspn to 1 gallon of water (I lose a lot of water to evaporation) and at most my ph only increased by .1 or so. Calfo recommends monitoring ph to make sure it doesn't change by more than .2 , since it fluctuates this much over the course of the day anyway it shouldn't hurt anything. Also he says kalk is one of few substances that actually dissolves better in cold water.

[Tim Marvin]

Interesting..... I had a .6 change in PH, but I probably added a higher percentage per water volume.

[robertpower3]

Yeah I drip kalk every once in a while. it usually only lasts about a week though and i get tired of mixing it and messing with it. I am going to get a kalk reactor from Jim D as soon as I get paid I hope. The 2 part is just much easier for me.

[VGB]

Now what brand of Kalk mix did you use. The red sea stuff reverses the polarity, and is used when needed IIRC.

This sounds intesting. What polarity is reversed? The polarity of the water molecule?
I haven`t been up up new products lately?