Dosing question

[Kyle46N]

I currently dose B-ionic manually. I test for calcium and alk. According to my lazy ways of dosing, my calcium stays within range, typically 420 to 460. But my alk gets low, was only at 6 dkh yesterday. It comes back up after I dose, but it seems to fluctuate. I'm thinking about getting a dosing pump. My question is this. Would it be sufficient to go with one pump dosing alk and dose calcium manually? The thought process is be consistent (pump) with what is varying(alk) and stick with manual dosing for the calcium, which has been stable. Thoughts? Thanks!

Kyle

[ErikH]

Dose kalk through your ATO see if that helps to keep it stable. You will need a handheld PH monitor to verify the PH of the kalk top off is 12.0

SUPER easy, and cheap.

[Europhyllia]

I just read a really interesting article on this subject (had a similar problem - alk always seemed to drop while calcium stayed stable). Here it is:


One of the most common complaints of new aquarists is that their aquaria seem to need more alkalinity than their balanced additive system, such as limewater, is supplying. While there are reasons this may actually be the case over the long term (these will be detailed later in this article), frequently these aquarists are seeing a "chemical mirage" rather than a real excess demand for alkalinity.
One of the interesting features of seawater is that it contains a lot more calcium than alkalinity. By this I mean that if all of the calcium in seawater (420 ppm; 10.5 meq/L) were to be precipitated as calcium carbonate, it would consume 21 meq/L of alkalinity (nearly 10 times as much as is present in natural seawater). In a less drastic scenario, let's say that calcium carbonate is formed from aquarium water starting with an alkalinity of 3 meq/L that it is allowed to drop to 2 meq/L (a 33% drop). How much has the calcium declined? It is a surprise to many people to learn that the calcium would drop by only 20 ppm (5%). Consequently, many aquarists observe that their calcium levels are relatively stable (within their ability to reproducibly test it), but alkalinity can vary up and down substantially. This is exactly what would be expected, given that the aquarium already has such a large reservoir of calcium

Here's the whole article: http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-12/rhf/index.php