Calcium bonding to tank walls and pumps

Laura and Jim will be hosting the May meeting this Saturday the 12th and it will be the usual of food, drinks, raffle and fun.
 
Doors will be open at 6:00 pm for social talk and the meeting will start at 7:00.  Parking gets a little tight and the city says you can't park on 4th but there is a parking lot a block away.   Meeting is usually held in the backyard so feel free to bring your favorite lawn chair, weather permitting of course.

If you need address/directions, contact a club member.

Best if you park at Mini Mall (where the spaghetti establishment use to be)
 
You will get to see his new frag tank set up in the making.
 
Hope to see you there!

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[Kylem]

I am having problems keeping my Calcium levels up.  The levels keep dropping to 250 or below 350ppm.
I am adding suppliment to my Calcium reactor; which by the way I thought would help from adding calcium all the time.  Things started okay but withing one week I have to clean a thick layer of calcium from my proteing skimmer and my pumps are jambing up because of the calcium.  My calcium is really low now and my alkalinity is at 3.0-3.2meq.  Can someone explain this to me.?!
What am I doing wrong now!

[Robert M.]

What are your magnesium levels?

Check out this article by Randy Holmes to see how magnesium, along with a few other things, can help keep you calcium from Precipitating.

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-04/rhf/feature/index.php

[Robert M.]

Here is another good article by Randy.

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/nov2002/chem.htm

Read the section on zone 3. I believe it covers your situation.

[Kylem]

Magnesium is at 1200ppm.  I added a little this morning and some more tonight.
It is still withing normal parameters.  PH is swinging with the water temp.  8.1 in the morning to 8.3 peak during the day.  Water temp goes from 78.5-81.0 F during the day.  I could put a chiller on to keep it more stable now that I have a controler or should I keep my water temp warmer.  I have been using the seaonal temperatures that come with the controller.  Calcium is 300ppm.

If I add a little or a fair amount of Calcium Chloride; The level doesn't change much and I can't seem to get it above 320ppm.

[Kylem]

Thanks for the link....just adding too much washing soda to boost the PH at night.  I will have to cut back on how much I add.

[Rico]

Kyle,

Be careful with the washing soda.  It is not food grade and can have contaminates that may cause problems. Soda ash is a good substitute.  Nate is using it in his dosing mix and finding it works well in keeping ph stable.  If you have the ingredients to make a dosing solution you might want to try that for a month or so to bring the tank up to where it should be, then bring the calc reactor online to maintain the levels.  Usually a calc reactor cannot make large changes in calcium and alk.  Also do not add too much calcium or alk at one time, if you have a sand bed, it will turn to a slab of concrete from the same issue that is binding your pumps.

You may want to also check your test results with someone else's test kits.  Sometimes they give false readings that can drive you nuts.

Rick

[Kylem]

Thanks Rick.  I am using Baked baking soda as washing soda....which is the same thing.   Baking it removes the water molecule and releases the extra CO2 and turns it into mostly carbonate instead of Bicarbonate.
So I was adding to much baked baking soda in the morning and night to keep the PH up which was a mistake.  This happened to me before and I just have to quit adding it and adding the Calcium Chloride to bring my Calcium level up.  This morning my Calcium is at 400ppm and my Alk is 2.3 meq/l.  I added a little carbonate this morning to bring my PH up because it had dropped below 8.0 to 7.97 and stayed there.  I have my Calcium reactor on a timer to come on at 8am and go off at 8pm so it doesn't keep adding CO2 into the water at night because my refugiums can't use it all up.   I found that if I dripped a little carbonate in the morning and at night it would keep my PH up more; but I was adding to much overall and it became supersaturated.   I need to ventilate my pump room more so I am puting an exhaust fan in to get rid of the excess C02 acumulating there.
Got any more helpful tips?