Adding a doser after Christmas

[Mark...]

Finally time to add a doser. Santa is bringing it. Currently manual dosing 0.5 oz of baked baking soda and 4 oz of calcium chloride crystals per week based off of keeping Alk at 8.4 and Calcium at around 440. . Total water volume is approx 225 gallons. Any suggestions on how much I should add and time frame etc via the new pumps?

 

[redfishbluefish]

Make solutions according to Randy's recipe....highly recommend recipe 1, which requires baking the baking soda (which you are already doing). I summarized my experiences with the recipes HERE. The one thing you'll need to do is determine the amount of bound water in your Calcium Chloride. If you let me know the brand, I can help with that. That will determine if you're using 2 1/2 cups or 2 cups of calcium chloride per gallon of RO/DI.

Any questions, please ask.

 

[art13]

Honestly for the little amount you are dosing, you can get brs pre packaged and it will last you for months, cheap for 5 bucks per gallon.

 

[redfishbluefish]

Honestly for the little amount you are dosing, you can get brs pre packaged and it will last you for months, cheap for 5 bucks per gallon.

Note that he's currently dosing the dry powdered chemicals....not the ready-made solutions....so it's not that little

 

[redfishbluefish]

Also note that I just went and revisited the above link of making up the solutions and have actually changed the temperature at which I bake the baking soda. I've upped it to 350 degrees....it doesn't hurt anything and guarantees that all the bicarb is converted to the carbonate.

 

[Mark...]

I've did a batch yesterday at 300 for 1 hour. Will increase next time. BRS recommends 2.5 cups per gallon on the Calcium and will follow their soda ash recommendation too. My main question is how many mls to add daily based on 0.5 oz of soda ash and 4 oz of calcium per week on 225 gallon system. I'm going to up the alk to 9.0 from 8ish. I guess start around 80 mls a day and test.

Off to work now...wont be able to chat till tomorrow, thanks!

 

[redfishbluefish]

Maybe this can help as a starting point for dosing.

0.5 ounces of dry sodium carbonate (baked baking soda) will raise alkalinity 1 dkh in your 225.....so your tank was "consuming" 1 dkh of akalinity. So converting this to Randy's formula (same as BRS formula), that's equivalent to about 160 milliliters (5.4 ounces) of solution.

Randy's recipe (BRS recipe) is chemically balanced, so once your numbers are stabilized, you should need an equal volume of the calcium part.

Now as far as making the calcium part, are you saying you have the BRS calcium chloride? If not, don't assume it's the same.....the calcium I have is near anhydrous and requires considerably less (2 cups) to equal the same concentration of calcium.

 

[redfishbluefish]

I just went back and looked at the earlier posts and now see that you stated the amounts you dosed per week. That's not that much. So again, using the above numbers, that's 160 mls/7 days, so now we're talking 23 mls per day....that's pretty light. How much hard coral do you have?

FYI, I have a mixed 90 gallon and use about 55 mls per day of each.

 

[art13]

Even when i dosed light, 20ml per day, i still spaced mine for a 24 hour period. I used the pouches to make things quick and easy. roughly 3700ml in a gallon / 20 a day and it will last half a year. what i'm doing alternatively now that i'm sps light is dosing kalc through my doser. roughly 300ml of kalk will raise my dkh by .1 and i add or subtract from my dosage from there, i have roughly 140-150g. calc will stay in line as long as my dkh does.

 

[Mark...]

Thanks for the replies. I forgot to mention I also run kalk in my top off. And I do use BRS calcium chloride. My system is mixed reef with about 15 pieces of SPS. Some pretty large.