Newbie need advice in dosing kalk

Hello all this is my first post . I am in this hobby for a while now and has been reading a lots from here and there. I just recently getting back into this hobby and reset up my 180 gallon tank. The tank has been up for about 2 months. It is doing great so far, it start to have coraline algea. I am currently mixing kalkwasser as  to replace top off water evaporate. I try to do monthly 10%-20% water change. I believed I drip one drop per second for about 9 hrs per day (guessing about more than 1 gallon per day) but this didn't seem to keep up with my water evaporation.  Any way, I am mixing kalkwasser with vinegar (15ml of vinegar and 1tsp of kalkwasser per gallon of water), I start with the low dose first since my tank is currently doesn't have much of the coral yet. I will increase the kalkwasser when I introduce more coral. As I know that dosing kalkwasser should only occur at night when the light are out. So my question is that since most of my water evaporation occurr during the day time, can I set it drip during the day time so that it will keep up with evaporation, or just increase the drip rate to get the same volume of water evaporation. Sorry for the long post, thanks in advance for any advice.

To be honest, since I restart this hobby. I haven't test any of this yet. I will get a test kit soon. So I have no idea what my ph level, cal and alk level at.  I am using 100% tap water for my system now. My RO system does not produce enough water for my top off water. For now I am going to stick with tap water until I buy a new RO system. Since I am start all of these new and try to do 20% water change monthly, so I assume my ph, cal, and alk should be normal for a while right?. Thank You very much for a quick response.

Thanks SSpargur for the advice. I am only adding kalkwasser right now as my top off water replacement and I need to promote the coralline algea to grow that is why I am only adding kalkwasser. My system have a refugium with caulerpa and protein skimmer running 24/7. I wait until my caulerpa take over the sump and I will consider to reduce the amount of time running protein skimmer (may during the day only) since skimmer will also remove the good stuff in the water. Am I thinking right or I still missing something?.

Thanks Mark Peterson

Okey let me describe my system again. The reason I said it new since I do 100% water change, I didn't change any water in the refugium, may be this is why my system cycle within 2 wks. I have more than 100 lb of live rock, but this rock have been in my tank for more than 3 yrs. So with new water and it has been up and running with new light for about 2 months now. and everything seem doing fine. I start to see the coralline algea to come out. I have an old torch coral doing extremely well, it give more branch, candy coral, toastood, devil hands and green finger are just add recently. A few variety mushroom ( green, blue, red, carpet and a giant cup just add to the tank lately). I also have add a electric green anemone, a clam, silver tip zenia.  In the tank I have 3 yellow tang, 1 power blue tang and 3 regular percula and one pair of true percular clown. Oh I forget about the 15 turbo snail just add recently. That is all for now. I would like to try some hard coral that is why I start look into kallwasser. Now I look into plankton for my softies. Okey I will get the test kit and let you know what the parammeters of my tank and we can go from there. Thanks again for your advice.

clown_fish wrote: ...coralline algae ...torch coral doing extremely well, it give more branch, ... candy coral, ... a clam,

Torch and Candy are hard corals.
Clams and coralline algae also and need calcium, so you are doing the right thing to add kalkwasser.

A 100% water change doesn't make it a new tank, unless the rock and sand were sitting dry for a while. I'm not sure if I understand you correctly.

Definitely do those water tests and tell us the results and do come to the meeting next Thursday Jan. 6th

Here are my test result. cal is 660 (high, I test couple time. could it be the test kit is defect?) Ph is 7.9 to 8.2. Alk is around 120, Nitrate and nitrite is not concern so I didn't test it. So my question is why my cal is high. dosing kallwasser shouldn't bring up Cal, it should only maintain the level right. so what should I do now. Up until to date all my coral are doing great. Even the hard coral(acropa) I just add last 2 wks is doing great. Thanks again for your opinion.

yes, I used the Oceanic salt. I will test that tonight. I didn't think about testing the fresh salt mix. So if that the case should i stop dosing kalkwasser for a while.

It's very unlikely (neigh impossible, imo) to drive your calcium that high, from say a starting point in the low 400s, using only kalkwasser.  Kalkwasser adds 2.8 dKH for every 20 ppm of calcium.  So to drive calcium from 410 ppm to 660 ppm using kalk would drive your alk from 8 dKH (assumed starting point) to 43 dKH.  Not really possible.  That high alk (and high pH from the kalk) would drive down your calcium.  My money is on the Oceanic salt as it's a very common problem for people using it.

Mark's advice regarding stopping the use of kalk is good, imo.  Use an alkalinity only additive such as a commercial buffer or baking soda to maintain your alkalinity around 3 meq/l or 8.5 dKH or 150 ppm CaCO3.  You can then resume kalk when your calcium level drops down into the 400s.

I don't understand that Alk number of 120.

Yes, without units attached to the number it could mean many things including a typo.  But I'm assuming it's a test kit that reports alk values in ppm CaCO3 equivalents.  The conversion is:

1 meq/l = 2.8 dKH = 50 ppm CaCO3 equivalents

so an alk of 120 ppm CaCO3 would be 2.4 meq/l or 6.72 dKH.

oops, I need to verify that number again. I thought I saw 120, but it is in the normal range.

So... I'm still confused.  What is your alk?

So what should I put in my tank.

Food for the fish and corals and a buffer (as needed) is all I would suggest.  At least until your calcium drops down into a more normal range.  This might take months in your new tank.  After the calcium does drop, then you could start adding both buffer and calcium, a balanced additive is great for this such as kalkwasser or B-ionic.

My father-in-law calls it "loving the tank to death" .  And he's right.  Nobody gets into the hobby with the idea that they're going to kill everything in their tank.  They want everything to be happy so they buy every additive in the store "cause it say's right on the label that manganese is an essential element for proper coral health".