Kalk question

[Bpb]

I think I may be experiencing the beginning of a Dino outbreak and want to start using kalkwasser to raise my ph. I also have been wanting to start dosing ca alk and mag anyway so this will be a two pronged effect

I've been reading all day on how to dose kalk. Tons of articles on how to mix it, DIY dripping methods, reactor use, chemistry, ect.

Maybe I'm missing something. I haven't found a CLEAR instruction on how to know exactly how much to add to the tank when dripping. I was gonna just use a DIY dropper made from a Gatorade bottle but can't seem to find out how to settle on a drip rate and how often to run it? Constantly? Until I reach desired ca alk and ph with it and then just test constantly. Can anyone help clear it up?

I am almost desperate to keep Dino's from running me out of the hobby, but am afraid of a tank wide peroxide dosing regiment. Help!

[FarmerTy]

I dosed peroxide in my 125-gallon tank with no issues. I have softies, lps, SPS, and anemones and did not encounter any ill effects other than the zoas would immediately close after dosing and open back up in about 20-30 mins. I am not saying everyone will have the same result but just passing along my experience.

-Ty

[Bpb]

Interesting. How long did you dose for? 1 mL per 10 gallons? What else did you do to treat?

Also. I run a refugium with chaeto. It is being overrun with Dinos as well. Would the peroxide dosing harm the chaeto? From what I understand it kills just about all micro algae. Would chaeto bite the dust too?

Edited December 6, 2012 by Bpb

[+brian.srock]

For kalk the rule of thumb is 1 teaspoon per gallon of RO/DI in your ATO. If you want to dose then I would check out the 2 parts at BRS

[FarmerTy]

Here's a link to the previous topic regarding dinos.

http://www.austinreefclub.com/topic/24429-dinoflagellates/

Lots of good advice in there as well as my own strategy for attacking my issue. I did 1ml per 10 gallons for about 2 weeks with lights off for 3 days and then minimal lighting period (1-2hrs) afterwards until the problem went away... wet skimmed as well as got very aggressive on activated carbon changes and GFO (2x a month instead of the usual 1x a month). Occasionally I would dose with a turkey baster directly at areas where dinos were attached (making sure to not blast more than the 1ml per 10 gallon rule total when using the turkey baster).

Once I couldn't see them anymore and they weren't coming back at the end of the photo period, I stopped doxing peroxide and then I kick started my biopellets back up and dosed bacteria to rebuild bacterial populations in the tank. I slowly increased lighting over a period of a month until I was back at my normal lighting levels. Done! Pain in the rear for sure.

I don't know about how chaeto would suffer but people are constantly giving that stuff away so replacing would not be an issue. I know that dosing peroxide is great for algae removal but more so as a dip instead of a smaller dose in this case. I did however observe less green growth on my glass during the treatment but that can be partially due to the peroxide and the shorter photo period as well.

Let me know if you have any other questions but that was my multi-pronged attack that I used to fight dinos. I don't think it was particularly one thing I did versus another that was the key factor, but more so the accumulation of all the different methods to weaken the dinos stronghold on my system.

-Ty

[Bpb]

That's a good read. Thanks for posting that. It sounds like my main fear of peroxide dosing is cured by running biopellets to keep bacteria populations from dying out entirely along with the dinos. Unfortunately I don't have a biopellet reactor right now. i have a very simple setup right now. It's a mixed reef with not a ton of corals, but I don't want to lose what I do have. I live pretty far away so obtaining new coral or even more chaeto is a stretch.

I've never dosed. Only have run gfo and carbon in media bags, and that's about it. I had some cyano problems for the past several months, and after removing much of the sand bed (down to about a 1" decorative sandbed, used to be an old old old 6" deep display tank sandbed), and cleaning the rocks, and doing a 3 day lights out, the cyano disappeared. Within about two weeks of the cyano being gone, the dinoflagellates have been growing and growing and growing.

Getting a reactor to run my GFO in is definitely in my plans. That's going to happen before the new year. Id also like to start dosing ca, alk, and mg to keep my levels on the higher end and stable, as I'd like to start adding more LPS and some of the easier SPS corals as well, but I want to wait untill I have the dino issue taken care of.

Without running a biopellet reactor, is it worth the risk to dose peroxide? I don't want to nuke the tank.

I'll definitely be running shorter photoperiods, and siphoning the tank through a filter sock and replacing the water. I'm ok with cutting back on water changes lol. Thanks for the advice

[George Monnat Jr]

I've been bolus dosing kalkwasser for almost a year, and it works really well. I have a 5g bucket that I fill with Mrs. Wages Pickling Lime and distilled white vinegar (3%/5%) from HEB. If no vinegar, then 2 teaspoons of pickling lime will dissolve in 1 gallon of RODI. If you add vinegar, you can get 3 teaspoons of lime dissolved in 1 gallon of RODI plus carbon dosing (similar to vodka, vitamin C, etc. but with the added benefit of more lime dissolved in the water). I bought a cheap ATO pump and a couple of float switches from AutoTopoff.com here in Austin and use my Apex to use the kalkwasser in the 5g bucket to keep my sump topped off.

Before I bought the Apex, I used DIY drippers. I used 5L Tupperware containers from Wal-Mart and modified them to drip into my skimmer section. Whenever I needed to replace evaporated water, at least a gallon's worth, then I would place the DIY dripper above the sump and let it empty at a drip (a stream was too fast and nothing too slow, but anywhere in between worked).

Here are the articles I used, and I haven't had any problems:

What Your Grandmother Never Told You About Lime –

"...three level teaspoons of solid lime per gallon of limewater, and 45 ml [9tsp] of vinegar per gallon of limewater."

A Simple DIY Kalk Dripper
All about kalkwasser

If you're already dosing vodka, it won't help with pickling lime. You can convert vodka to vinegar with this rule of thumb:

“8 mls of vinegar for each ml of vodka being replaced”

[Bpb]

Thanks for the reply! I read those articles a few times. I guess it may be mentioned in there somewhere, but I'm not getting how much/often to dose. I understand how to make the kalkwasser, and how to fashion a diy dripper, or that you can just use kalkwasser as your topoff water. But how do you know when you've dosed enough?

If using the drip method, do you just drip 24/7? Is there any risk of overdose? Or do you just monitor PH daily and let that dictate how much/often you use it. I would mainly be using it to raise Ph, not necessarily as a dosing supplement. I have some Seachem Reef Buffer. A full jar of it, but I've heard that is dangerous to use and can make your alk skyrocket? If I can just use the Reef Buffer temporarily (as in for a month) to keep Ph elevated enough to kill the dinos, then discontinue I'd be ok with that. Thoughts?

[+brian.srock]

You dose your current daily evaporation rate.

[George Monnat Jr]

Thanks for the reply! I read those articles a few times. I guess it may be mentioned in there somewhere, but I'm not getting how much/often to dose. I understand how to make the kalkwasser, and how to fashion a diy dripper, or that you can just use kalkwasser as your topoff water. But how do you know when you've dosed enough?

You're using the kalkwasser as top-off water to replace what has evaporated. Normally you would just add RODI to replace the evaporated water and get your water level back to where it should be. This is the same deal but with pickling lime in the RODI.

Without a controller (pre-Apex), I added about a gallon at a time (5L DIY drip bin) as needed to top off. Adding a gallon of kalkwasser into my skimmer section of my sump in my 150g system was never enough to spike the pH where anything would be hurt. It would mix with the sump water and be good before it was returned to the DT or even the refugium in the sump.

With my Apex, I have the ATO pump turn on to add kalkwasser (top off water) from my 5g bucket whenever the level is below the float switches and pH is less than about 8.25 - that prevents bad pH spikes. They still happen in the skimmer section, but I never see pH spikes in the DT.

Basically, if you're manually adding you can drip in a 1/2 gallon or gallon every time that much evaporates from your tank and it should work well.

[FarmerTy]

A biopellet reactor is not needed for peroxide dosing. The idea as I understood it was to use the peroxide to wipe out as much of the dinos as possible. It will also cause other single-celled organisms to die as well, basically wiping out a lot of your bacterial populations in your tank. After the dinos are gone, replenish your bacterial populations with any sort of bacterial additive (microbacter, Dr. Tim's, or TLC from Fishy business). There is not point in replenishing while you are treating with peroxide, you will just kill off the bacteria you dose.

After my dinos disappeared, I went heavy with the bacterial addition until I felt like the tank normalized (about 1.5 months, weekly additions). I started back up my biopellets during that time to capture some of the beneficial bacteria and jump start it again, since all the bacterial populations in the reactor had died since it was shut down. Ideally, if you ran your biopellets correctly, you shouldn't even be adding additional bacteria to your tank as it should all be skimmed out before hitting your main display either way.

I don't think you have to worry about losing any coral due to dosing. I have over 125+ varieties of softies, LPS, SPS, and inverts and not a single coral was affected (besides zoas closing for 30mins and then opening back up).

As far as testing/supplementing alk/calcium/magnesium, as long as regular water changes are occurring, I feel the testing/supplementing is not needed, especially if you are only keeping some LPS and easy SPS. The water changes should take care of most of your needs. Now if you throw a clam in there and start adding a bunch of SPS, then it may be time to look into supplementing and testing.

To me, adding SPS and a clam is a double-edged sword. Before adding those, you could have stable enough levels for LPS and softies with just simple water changes and just keeping an eye on your salinity and temperature. Once SPS and clams are added, you get to enjoy the beauty of them but at the same time, your work on your tank just about doubles. Supplementation, testing, constant monitoring... for me, the reward was worth it but I do remember back to the days of my softie/LPS tank and remembered how carefree those days were.

Don't get me wrong, I am lazy. So I've basically automated everything in the tank but still... it is a lot of work and stress... more so than a softie/LPS tank. If you're in school right now, softie/LPS is the way to go... otherwise, a lot of your money and time will be on the tank.

-Ty

[Bpb]

Good thoughts. My salinity has been on the low end (1.023 ish) since i've been skimming so wet so I'm in the process of raising it. I've got 4 monti caps that are growing well, a favia frag, and am picking up a couple tiny birds nests in the next week, otherwise i'm all leathers and zoas. I'm going to reduce my photoperiod to 5 hours blues-with 2 hours daylights in the middle for a couple weeks, and raise my salinity/sg up to 1.026, cut out the water changes, and just siphon off as much gunk as I can through a sock and see how that does. I'll be running GFO and possibly some phosguard in the mean time.

I'm in college station which is a couple hours at least from the austin LFSs, and the houston ones as well, so I may have to just order some bacteria supplements online. Does bulkreef carry any of those? I don't want to commence with peroxide dosing until i'm certain that I'm ready to replenish bacteria populations.

I run chaeto, skim like crazy, try to run GFO and carbon, weekly water changes lots of flow...And other people in town never touch their tanks, and literally have skimmerless tanks with just rock and flow, and their's are spotless with flourishing corals. what gives?!?

[FarmerTy]

The monti caps will take a toll on your calc/alk levels. They are quick growers and may push you into the need to maybe dose calcium/alk if the amount of mass of monti caps in your tank is on the higher side.

I think you can order Dr. Tim's but I don't know from where. A quick google search should square that away for you.

As far as potential sources of nitrates/phosphates, do you have an RO/DI system? Have you tested your water coming out of that system if you do? What's your feeding regiment? Bioload? Do you have a lot of fishes? Your chaeto I assume is in a sump. Do you run a reverse lighting cycle for the sump? How much chaeto do you have? I had best success when my chaeto at minimum took up roughly 10-15 percent volume of my tank size. Basically, for a 100-gallon tank, the volume of chaeto would roughly fill a 10-15 gallon tank.

Other potential sources are settling of detritus in tank? phosphate-saturated liverock?

Just a heads up, I removed cyano from my tank and that is when the dinos started up in my tank. With removal of one part of the balance in your system, another will fill its place unless the food source is removed. I wish I would have stuck with the cyano and just treated the nutrient source with cyano in the tank instead of letting dinos get a foothold. Just a word of warning if someone is unsatisfied with cyano in their tank... don't kick out your current resident unless you're prepared to have their meaner and messier cousin take over the place instead.

-Ty

[Bpb]

Classic blunder, not posting tank info my bad.

55 gallon display

10 gallon sump

10 gallon refugium

spectrapure csdi RODI unit. 0 tds coming out

Never tested nitrates or phosphate. I figured, since I have had pest algaes/bacterias, I have both

chaeto on reverse lighting. It used to completely fill the tank, I've kept it to about softball sized so it can tumble. I've basically been harvesting it more often...Should I stop that?

reef crystals salt.

fish: engineer goby (adult), clarkii clown, pajama cardinal, azure damsel, and royal gramma

I feed chopped frozen shrimp from the seafood market at HEB, san francisco bay frozen marine mix cubes (about 1/4 cube at a time), and NLS thera+ pellets. All rinsed very well before feeding. I feed a portion of ONE of those choices every day to every other day (15-20 pellets, 1/4 cube, or an equal portion of shrimp), just depending on what I feel like feeding. All in all they get fed each once a week or so maybe a bit more.

When I got the tank it had been kept for years and years as an fowlr tank. deep sandbed in the display, never maintained, bulbs never changed, neglected for the most part, 1.032 s.g. when I got it, covered in algae.

This was in may. I've since siphoned out most of the sand little by little, down to 1" and I vaccum that heavily during weekly water changes. New bulbs runnning. What else am I missing? I just recieved my red sea pro test kits so I'll post some ca, alk, and mg numbers once I get my SG back up to 1.026. Right now it's kinda dropped slowly to 1.023 because I'm skimming too wet methinks. What else?

Edited December 6, 2012 by Bpb

[+brian.srock]

It seems like your on the right track. It takes months to rid algae from your system and you need to just keep up with the cleaning schedule with water changes and stirring the sand bed and cleaning out any place detritius could build.. I would also double your current CUC

[FarmerTy]

I'd keep doing what you are doing for the chaeto. I see nothing wrong with that.

I would definitely cool it on the shrimp and frozen foods. I feed about once every two weeks with frozen as a treat but otherwise, I try to minimize my frozen foods. Be careful with frozen shrimp from the store... heard rumors of places spraying nitrate on them for preservation I believe. Don't know much about it but what I heard.

I would keep the salinity at 1.023 for now... the higher salinity is what dinos prefer.

If I had to take a guess, it would be your liverock and sand from the former FOWLR system. The rocks from those systems were usually exposed to higher nitrates and phosphates and may be slowly leaching over time in your system. Just my opinion so take it for what it is worth...

[+brian.srock]

Keep harvesting the chaeto. Since it utilizes phosphates to grow by trimming it your completely removing the phosphate for good out of there.

[DerrickH]

When I dosed Mrs Wages, my cheato became very "crunchy"....it eventually died and I threw it away.

[+etannert]

+1 rocks leaching nutrients back into the system.

[+brian.srock]

I don't like kalk as it leaves a chalky residue everywhere in my sump so I vodka dose and manual dose with gatoraid bottles Alk/Cal.

[George Monnat Jr]

I let the kalkwasser settle for an hour or two, and then it's clear. If the ATO puts it straight in the sump water, then I have no residue. If it first hits the skimmer or something before mixing with the sump water, then it'll leave a white residue on whatever it hit.

Tom (tmz), one of the chemistry gurus on RC, had a conversation about kalkwasser a few days ago that devolved into an argument about clear or not.

[Bpb]

Some observations of my livestock. My monti caps seem largely unaffected. They have good color and polyp extension. My favia is looking ok too. My radioactive dragon eye zoas, eagle eyes, and kedd red zoas are open and colorful, however my punk rockers, nuclear green palys, and giant green palys are mostly closed and very irritated looking.

Just completely lost some lunar eclipse palys. My finger leather looks ok, but my toadstool hasn't had polyp extension for a couple days now. Pretty much ever since I added another powerhead. It'll extend it's polyps about 1/4" for an hour or two but then close up again for several hours. Back and forth. Nothing is being directly blasted with flow, and I believe I have eliminated all dead spots between my 4 flow sources.

Fish all seem fine. Lost one snail, but that very well may have been to old age. He came with the tank and was big so he could have been several years old. No other snail death

[FarmerTy]

I'm sure you know, but for those reading that don't know, snail deaths are associated with dino's. The toxicity of the dinos will usually end up killing all your snails if the dinos are persistent enough in your system.

As far as dinos affecting your corals, you will usually see it first in your softies... mainly irritated polyps. I had some deflated LPS and then the more picky types of SPS will start receding from the base up.

[Bpb]

Just did a quick check of a few parameters. I know lots of people would gasp at the fact that I've not tested any of these parameters for a long time (pretty much just once at setup, with expired api kits). Some people say they never test though. I figured, since I didn't have a ton of stonies, and was using reef crystals, I would be fine. These tests were done using a VeeGee refractometer, calibrated with pinpoint, and the Red Sea Pro test kit. I watched multiple videos as overkill to make sure I was performing the tests correctly.

Sg: 1.023

Ca: 400 ppm

Alk: 7.0 dKH

Mg: 1240 ppm

Those numbers look fairly normal to me...I kind of expected them to be out of whack. Don't know why. Unfortunately I don't have a Ph test though, so I'm afraid it might be risky to drip kalk? What do you guys think?

[Bpb]

So jeeper, I had another question. Looking around for bacterial supplements, none of the local places have them, and I won't be placing an online order for another couple weeks. I have found seachem stability locally though. That and instant ocean bio spira. Both are decent companies with decent products. Would you think either of those would be a decent replacement for dr Tim's bacteria, if I were to try a 7 day peroxide regiment?