Adding vinegar to kalk

Ok.

I have been having a slight issue keeping up with the demands of my Sps. I'm trying to keep my alk at 11dkh which isn't very easy to do. The two part I use is nano code a and b by brightwell. I'm gunna try the 2 part from BRS (is it good?).

Anyways, I have very little evaporation so adding kalk the normal way isn't that great for my salinity. I want to add more calcium and alk per drop so I don't have to add as much. I did 15 mL acetic per 1/2 tsp CaOH then diluted it out. Is this ok to start with? Anyone else do the same?

 

Bump it up

 

Hmm. I have never heard of this. But then again Ive never dosed two part. Bump.

 

That seems high. Vinager is a carbon source, like vodka, just 1/8 the potency. So, if you think of it as such, you can use the standard Reefkeeping vodka article, just multiply the vodka value by 8.

Vodka Dosing by 'Genetics' and 'Stony_Corals' - Reefkeeping.com

However, since your adding it to kalk, there is an additional limitation, being how much it can boost the potency. Personally, I've been adding vinegar to kalk for a while now and use about 9 tablespoons 5g of limewater. So, that works out to about 25 ml/gallon. The most that is really effective for increasing the potency is about 45ml/g. This would allow you to disolve about 2.7 tsp of kalk per gallon.

I built up to that level though, although I also dose about 3ml per day of vodka. It dosn't completely keep up with demand, so I use a little 2-part to top it off.

 

Thanks for the article! So basically I'm increasing calcium and bacteria this way? So I should take it slow so I don't have a bacterial bloom? So it's cool to do this? I read somewhere that a max of 30mL per quart with 1/2 tsp and one should start with less. So that's why I did 15 mL per quart with 1/2 tsp.

Like I said, I have very little evap so if I need to go slow it's not a big deal.

 

I find it odd that you cant keep up your levels with dosing. If it's all dialed in properly there shouldn't be any problems.

Two things to keep in mind that that randys article above does not address about kalk and vinegar... 1. The pH will be lowered when mixing if that makes a difference for you. 2. The vinegar actually works in two ways: adding a source of carbon and a source of bicarbonate. The alkalinity in our tanks consist of carbonate and/or bicarbonate in your water. This will increase your bicarbonate concentration which is great for corals like montiporas, however it makes corals like most acros have a harder time bonding their needed carbonate.

 

That's interesting, do you have a reference on carbonate vs bicarbonate? The logic re: kalk dosn't quite sound right, though, but maybe I'm missing something. Calcium hydroxide does react with CO2 to initially form bicarbonate, but carbonate and bicarbonate interconvert and the ratio is fixed to pH. Actually, at low pH, you'll have more carbonate than bicarbonate and high pH, will shift to more carbonate. This is why you get precipitation events with high pH, as the high carbonate levels then react with calcium to form calcium carbonate and precipitate out of solution.

 

i dont have the link unfortunately :-/ However, I usually only pull articles from Adv. Aquarist or reefkeeping magazine so it is somewhere in one of those archives...
I started searching after using vinegar+kalk for a while and noticed an explosive increase in montipora growth and very slow growth in acros. Then i found that article which coincided with what i was experiencing...

But then again, that does leave a lot of open variables so its probably not best to jump to conclusions off of only one article that fits my observations

 

Gottcha, I always noticed that 2-part drives coralline algae better than kalk, but everyone else keeps telling me how their coralline "explodes" when they switch to kalk. Maybe both are true and just shifts based on other variables.

As to growth, there are published articles that show with high nitrate, zoox increases and correlates with a decreases in calcification under high light conditions (Marubini et al. 1996). It was hypothosized that this was due to a competition between the zoox and the coral for inorganic carbon. IIRC they hypothesized that the reason for Edit: Atkinson's (not Delbeck's sorry) Waikiki aquarium experiment's results was because there was high enough pCO2 that it didn't matter. So, with our systems being quite high in nitrate compared to the ocean (even ULNS), maybe higher CO2 isn't so bad. Perhaps, burning off too much is even detrimental, i.e. kalk dosing. I'm speculating though, there is a lot of literature on CO2, showing it is detrimental, but whether that's always true, under all variable sets, I couldn't say off the top of my head without doing more research. I also don't know why it would effect montis and acros differently. I'll have to do some reading, that would be interesting if there was something to it

 

Other thoughts while waiting for the bus... I should mention, in nature corals get most of their inorganic carbon from food. Our tanks are low in food, so, maybe that isn't the case. However maybe the food available is more suitable to montis, so, maybe they have an advantage with low CO2. Also, I think acro growth has been shown to be dependent on organic and inorganic carbon, but not really pH so much. So maybe the advantage shifts to acros when there is higher co2 and lower pH. Idk, just thinking out loud really...


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