Calcium explosion?

[jtReef]

Hey there.
Hopefully you can all help. A friend of mine appears to have had a calcium explosion. The tank turned white. Then black. Then cleared on it's own leaving most of the corals dead. It was a rather large tank over 150gal per my understanding. I do not beleive a calcium reactor is used or kalk wrasser. I believe only regular liquid calcium additaves are used. Maybe chainging brands would affect it as well do to higher calcium contents.

Can you please confirm? As well as explain the tank turning black? I remember reading about when you overdoes with calcium the calcium can hit the breaking point where it basically explodes and covers everything thus completely depleting the calcium in the tank. It is just the black part that is confusing me.

Any imput would be greatly appreciated.

[Diver_1298]

I too have seen the white but never the black... And it happened because of a Kallswasser overdose. The white is the precipitation event but it did not kill anything. It usually means the calcium levels are way too high to be supported by a lower alkalinity level and or a low magnesium level.
The blackness is not anything I have heard of??
Usually a couple of good water changes will take care of this and monitoring calcium and alkalinity in conjunction with magnesium will ensure that it will not happen again.
Jim

[Tangster]

If the calcium is at near saturation and then the Carbonates are spurred up-wards and a fast spike in PH will make the calcium and carbonates form and create calcium carbonates and they fall out of solution and lack of magnesium in a major factor at it severs as an emulsifier to keep the two dissimilar substance is solution with one another as they are both oppositely charged elements . In short he two do not like each other and the magnesium acts as the referee (: and helps keep peace in the sand box

[reef_guru]

im the one your all talking about, prior to whatever happened, here are the settings: ph = 8.2-8.4, ca = 490-500, kh = 4.0-4.5, mg = 1500-1550, sr = 25-30, no3 = 10-25, a = 0, nh3 + nh4 = 0, po4 = 0.
used was a liquid product (no name calling). the problem arose when the amount of product i was introducing reached its maximum daily allowance and the ca,kh,mg,sr levels were slowly going down. meaning i was unable to feed the system what it required and it needed more. so i disconnected the liquid products and brought the calcium reactor online with no kalwasser. overnight the tank was like milk (not snow or kh percipitation) then black and i mean black. ph went to 7.4-7.6, kh went to 16-18, ca went to 780-800, nh4 +nh4 stayed at 0 and no3 stayed at 10 probably due to 7-50% water changes, but i was caught behind the curve ball and killed about 80 sps that ive had for years. there are 5 different calciums: hydroxide, oxide, carbonate, gluconate and chloride. there are basically 3 alkalinities: borate, carbonate and bicarbonate. my ? is what happens when you combine hydroxide with oxide or chloride with hydroxide, or any other combination there of?

[Tangster]

I'm a bit confused with your post as to what you brought if you have a new Ca reactor and used Kalk in it then bad idea But If You switched to a Ca reactor or a Kalkwasser reactor ? I just posted to someone the other day about what to watch out for with CO'2 and the PH swing from a Ca/ reactor. First off PH is nothing I'd even look at unless I was using a Ca reactor.. Then all you need to worry about is the effluent output PH. did you use a controller or relying only on bubble count and effluent PH ? What media did you use and how much where you dosing via the output back into the system ?
Also whats the PH and are you off gassing the effluent ? It can and should take a week or a few weeks to safely dial in a Reactor. I am not a fan of the controllers I prefer to start slow with few bubbles and adjust up wards balancing the bubbles to effluent out put to what the Ca and Carbonates levels are in my tank.
The Controllers give a false sense of security in that all you need to do is set and forget and not pa attention to how much super saturated effluent is reaching the tanks and then again the common mistake new reactor users make is to does to fact at night when natural CO'2 s are high. If it was a kalk reactor then it was a PH spike that killed everything from the carbonate fall out as for all the different types of this and that its all overload ask someone who is experienced and not a reading repeater of some article or get to much of your information or rely to much on info from a book
The black is hydrogen sulfide . from the cO2 reaction with the tanks water and die off of the bacteria I think if memory serves me it has been several yrs since I discussed this one . I may be mistaken on this though ? If you tell me the name and model of what you brought I can tell or offer you more info on its use and reactions pf its use. sorry for your problems and loss

P.S Just re reading this trying to get a firm grip on your problem.. OK first off the stuff you have been dosing could never not be to a point that it would not keep up you just needed to increase the doage amounts and the frequency of the dosages. Now if you went to a Calcium reactor then thats the best thing you could have done if its sized and set up properly . As for the confusion about the additives well a good complete buffer has all three of the borate, carbonate and bicarbonate elements in them. As for the Ca. Ca chloride is what Kent's turbo Calcium is made of or snow melt flakes Ca. Hydroxide is Pickling lime and or kalkwasser Its just dolomite or limestone that has been flashed baked under high heat and some pressure . This is used in aKalkwasser reactor and in Ca. reactors we use dead cloras and naoural ocean sand and minerals and they are dissolved into solution with the Us of CO'2 gas and lower P.H around 6.1 04 so.

[reef_guru]

no kalwasser was used as stated before. the ca reactor ( ph = 6.8, ca = 640, kh = 10 ) at a drip rate of 25cc/min, to a second chamber ( ph = 7.1, ca = 700, kh = 12 ) at a drip rate of 20cc/min. co2 rate is 30 b/m for 5 hours while the metal halides are on. keep in mind ca reactors are really kh reactors with calcium. hydrogen sullfide happens when bacteria break down organic matter in the absence of oxygen.

[Tangster]

What brand of media did you use in your ractor ? I gace seen well heard of this once in the past and the media was poluted and the reacton with the CO'2 was the cause.. All media is not equal..

[reef_guru]

the media is carib-sea arm aragonite. also in use, a denitrator from aquaripure which is fed 10 cc vodka/week. the denitrator is a seperately closed system with its own pump set for 6-8 drops/sec. the only thing i can possibly come up with is that the biological function of the denitrator reacted with anyone of the combinations of the calcium properties (oxide, gluconate, carbonate, hydroxide, chloride) breaking down the ionic balance to produce a poisonous mix of hydrogen sulfide.

[Tangster]

Oh you did not mention the use of a sulfide /rotten egg denitrator.. I would never use one of them again ever. I have seen that happen with their use several times me being one of them, had you just fed it with in a few days of this happening ? they are as bad as a DSB in all reality.. See l Calcium sulfate and organic mater react though a bacterial process to produce hydrogen sulfide and calcium bicarbonate and the kick starter was maybe the denitrater type you are using . If you have a sump then a drip coil is far safer and actually better . I ran a system like this yrs ago and it was knocked off the tanks rim and fell into the sump and with in a 1/2 hr it was almost a total wipe out. Black sludge all over the tank and the sudden PH swing down wards pulled the Ca out of solution. Calcium will fall out of solution when a sudden large swing in PH happens to act as the catalyst. Oh also when you start this thing back up then you want to lower the PH of the reactor to 64 to get any advantage from it. PH of 69 is a bit to high to put the media into solution and ARM is a good media as any to use.

[reef_guru]

denitrators are gone. didnt know that about them. thanks for the help.