First Chip and now me...

[Gatortailale]

Why not Auto Top-Off the water in the 5 gallon bucket as well as the sump?

 

 

I, like Chip, only use a small amount of Kalk in the Kalk stirrer. I add about 1/3 cup twice a week. It prevents the kalk overdose and,IMO, is more effective.

 

 

Good idea, can be done, I've just been lazy to do it. Somewhat simple if you get right parts. I have the above pictured float in my ro/di resivor so it's connected to my ro unit. After I do water change and move fresh ro/di over to salt mix 32g trash can, I just let it produce water till that float kicks off RO/DI unit. I could probably splice / T it off again to bucket and add some kind of float valve and the mechanical float to bucket.

 

I think here on the bucket you use for dosing, you would want to use electric float swich since you would be constantly drawing water with dosing pump and using above pictured mechanical system would short cycle ro/di unit way to much. For me, I cut the expense for now of getting all the extra float switches.

 

I've use the above pictured for 5 years on original system, and 2.5 years on new system and never had a problem with topoff adding to much water. As long as your RO/DI can produce, it hasn't failed me yet.

[lanman]

haha actually the windows in the basement are usually covered in dew during the winter months.... totally volume is around 150 give or take. I run a dehumidifer 24/7 in the storage room where the system is set up in so that accounts for the increase in evap. yeah the pump came on like normal and usually dumps around a 1/4 gallon in my sump at a time so that why it pumped so much kalk into the system. the main reason i had a kalk OD is because I left the internal reactor pump on over night on accident, and when the fresh ro is pumped in the reactor it goes straight to the bottom causing the kalk to rise up and out. if the pump was off I have about 6" of effluent which is pumped in and not the actual kalk... what can you do right? we all make mistakes, its just this time its costing me mucho cash.

 

I have an 'ATO' system. The nicest thing and the worst thing about it is that it will only run for about 60 seconds. If the float valve doesn't tell it by then to stop - it stops anyhow. And will not come back on until I unplug the unit, or flip the float valve up. The only time I've overdosed on kalk - I really had to work at it. I was low on water by more than 60 seconds worth - so I unplugged the pump from the ATO and stuck it into the wall. So I wouldn't have to turn the ATO off and on several times. And then forgot about it while I was waiting for it to fill the sump to the right level. Fortunately, I only had about 2 gallons of water in the topoff reservoir - so all I ended up with was high pH and cloudiness. Nothing damaged.

 

We all live and learn in this hobby - we are taking care of animals just about as delicate and unforgiving of mistakes as possible. After all - in their natural environment, the temperature never varies more than a couple of degrees, and the chemical makeup of the water is quite constant, as well. They don't HAVE to live through violent changes.

 

My tank has a nitrate problem. I think of it as corals off the coast of India or somewhere - trying to survive despite the pollution. I do the best I can to keep the nitrate pollution down, but some of the more delicate corals waste away anyhow.

 

bob

[yauger]

First I want to thank all of those who offered to help out a fellow member in a time of despair, really means a lot to me to have a support group for my "special" hobby. I know it sounds kind of corny but if it wasn't for WAMAS I would have tore down my system many years ago. So thanks a million gang!

 

Morning 48 hour update...

 

Aside from the list of losses there is no more to add to it! the system is 100% clear again and the pH is finally back down to 8.2 so I think it would be safe for me to turn the MH lights back on (I have been running VHO's & T5's only for the past 2 days) my remaining fish are eating well and seem to be happy unaffected to the kalk OD (of course this does not include those who have past away) most of the remaining corals that either had partial bleaching have seemed to stop the tissue loss and have extended polyps once again. so it appears the worst has now past and now clean up will begin.

 

Tonight I will begin to siphon out kalk dust laying on the rocks and sand bed in addition to the equipment and sump. Once this is complete I will perform a 15% water change and will continue the water changes until 100% volume has been replaced. I will try to complete this over a 1-2 week period, however with my water changing system I can replace 50% at a time but will try to with hold doing this unless I see a spike in ammonia. hopefully this will bring the health of the corals back to 80% where they were before the Kalk event within a couple of weeks. I'm sure this is going to be a long road to recovery for my corals but for now I see promising changes beginning to happen.

 

As for the Kalk reactor itself I will be taking the advice of Craig (WAMAS PREZ) and separate the ATO from the reactor and run it separately. I have a x-large RO reservoir so adding a separate smaller container for the kalk should be easy.

 

I will add more updates as time passes over the next week but for the most part if nothing else bad develops the updates will cease. Again thank you all for the support I will most likely get back in touch with you when my tank is ready for replacement frags.

 

~Joshua~

[JMsAquarium]

Great news Josh Glad to hear that your system is back to bnormal parameters. It will soon stabilize. Keep up the good work. Let me know if you need any help.