Automated Dosing Methods

A calcium reactor will provide both calcium and alkalinity.  Kalkwasser will also provide both.  Kalk dosing is what many of those IV pumps are used for.  Probably no reason to dose anything else, imo.

Kalk is lime (calcium hydroxide).  When it's dissolved in freshwater and dosed (or just dumped) it delivers both calcium and alkalinity to your tank.  Here's what happens:

Ca(OH)2 + H2O = Ca + 2OH +H2O    this is solid kalk dissloving in water

2OH + 2CO2 = 2HCO3  this is hydroxide from the kalk forming bicarbonate (or carbonate)

So you end up with one Ca + 2 HCO3 (bicarbonate)

There's your calcium and alkalinity for corals to use.

A calcium reactor uses CO2 to dissolve old coral skeletons.

CaCO3 + CO2 + H2O = Ca + 2HC03

Again you end up with one Ca and 2 HCO3 (bicarbonate)

calcium reactors will also deliver what ever other elements are incorporated in the skeleton of the coral since it all dissolves in the low pH of the reactor.  Kalk does not provide these other elements.  Water changes and/or other supplements can provide these.

As for iodine, I don't add any to my tank so setting up a dosing system doesn't make sense for me.  But if you are dosing lots of it (I can't imagine why) it might for you.  A couple drops per week of Lugal's is pretty easy to keep up with.

Ok, thanks for the detailed info finch. One more question. Is kalk consistent enough to dose regularly, or does it need to be adjusted often? Does it raise alkalinity (and risk it going too high?) or balance it to where it needs to be?

Oh, and back to the original question of the thread. What are the different methods people use for auto-dosing kalk?

Patrick,

IV pumps are programmed with number of cc's per hour, not kg.  Some can go as low as a cc an hour, it depends on the pump.  Baby syringe pumps can be set to less than one cc per hour.  If you get one and want to know how to program it, you can ask Suzy or I.  

Hey Banana, I assume you're just talking about the driplines, right? If so, how can you tell how much you're really putting in (8kg/day etc)

Suzy wrote: I don't use an "automatic" system. I don't think it is worth the hassle.

But I'm trying to get away from the "Hassle" of keeping track which stuff I'm supposed to be dosing when.

I want to take all the stuff I'm dosing (Calcium, Alk, Strontium, Iodine, minerals), get a pump for each one, divide the weekly dose by 7 days, then by 24 hours, and set the pump to release that much per hour and not worry about it anymore (except to test the water daily for a while to make sure it's keeping it balanced).

That is my fish geek dream Suzy....complete automation (oh if only I could hook the whole thing up to my computer and have it monitor my water levels and dose automatically and I could watch the whole thing across the web from work)

With the IV tubing, you can estimate drips/min. Which can be converted to ml/min or ml/day. It is not completely accurate, but pretty close. Ive never tried the ones from my work for kalk, so don't know how well they work. As Suzy mentioned, if the thing gets clogged, it will change the drip rate. I was thinking about using one to dose phytoplankton. I can save a couple if someone wants to try one. I'll try to get most of the blood off ....ok, I won't save that part.