Is Kaulkwasser truly the BOMB?

[wayne]

You might need to add calcium, but with the corals mentioned at the start you might get away with just water changes. You need to measure it to know. If demands are low, you might well be able to use a 2 part or bi-ionic solution, but these aren't practical if you have 200 gallons of acropora - your costs will be unreal. Kalkwasser was the original , and still works. You could also use a calcium reactor, and for a 200 gallon high demand tank, it will only take a few months before your 2 prat usage would have paid for one.
How do you use the vinegar solution? I can understand solution is much higher, but when do you add it. Why don't you just increase the pH of the kalkwasser to about 12, where Ca solution becomes much higher again?

 

[BrianH]

Wayne,

There is only so much kalk powder that can be dissolved into water. If your tank's calcium demands are higher than you can add dosing kalk you can dissolve tha kalk powder in vinegar to increase the amount of kalk dissolved into the solution. Please see the enclosed article for more info.
kalk&vinegar solution

Brian

 

[mogurnda]

The other thing that vinegar does is provide organic carbon to keep alkalinity up. I have started the experiment. We'll see how it goes.

 

[wayne]

That's an interesting article. I am fully aware that there's only so much calc that can be added to a volume of water, but I'm also aware that that amount is at it's lowest at about pH 9 or 10. At higher pH's you can super saturate much higher amounts, but you then get problems with pH going up if you chuck in a solution at pH 12 or whatever.