cashh.de

Well, chemistry in seawater is a complex thing.

From time to time i am asked how i do water maintenance.
Read the following, thats how i do.

Tap water is way to “dirty” to be used directly. The water I use for preparation of seawater is cleaned by a reverse osmosis and run through a ion exchanger afterwards.
The reverse osmosis produces very clean water and the ion exchanger removes the rest of the Silicate which would produce diatom algae. I use this water also for automatic refill of the evaporations and water removals of the tank.

For waterchanges (5 to 10% a week) I make up “seawater” with Tropic Marin Classic salt with the mentioned clean water with a concentration of 3.5%. Made up about a day before use.

Thanks to Hans Werner Balling, the times of Kalkwater / Kalkmixer / Calciumreactor etc. are over. They were not very reliable. Kalkwater doesn’t provide enough Calcium and KH (Carbonhardness) for a high amount of stonecorals and with the reactor its difficult to keep KH and Ca (and maybe also Mg) at the right, high value. Due to the fact that “in my first life”, I was a skilled chemistry laboratory worker, i feel a certain sympathy for messing around with chemicals.
A description of his method unfortunately in german language is to be read in this article.
Claude Schumacher recently published an english version of the “Balling light” method on his site: Balling-light. There is also a helpful calculator for Ca/Mg additions on that page.

I decided to use my own, modified “Balling”-method.
Read how I do it and what I think “Balling” is all about in the menu (”Balling” left in the chemistry section).

I started using the Grotech peristaltic dosing pump, which was only able to dose up to 1999ml a day, which is not enough for the desired volumes. Mg is still done with the Grotech, but the others are dosed using AquaMedic’s Reefdoser quadro(tm) (tank is about 3300 liters gross):
UPDATE: The AquaMedic IMHO really is a pain in the …., I was told prior, but unfortunately had to check by myself :-(.
Actually I am using industrial grade hosepumps from Harton (a German manufacturer) and am very happy with them.
Well, one of them costs about as much as a 4-time Reefdoser, but the other difference is, they really do what they should.

Once a week i measure Ca/Mg/KH with Tropic Marin tests and correct the values by adding the desired amounts of chemicals directly to the filter sump or reducing the dosage.
Ca ist kept at 420-440 ppm, Mg at 1320-1340 ppm and KH at 7-9 degree german hardness.(°dH).
I do 5%-10% waterchange a week to be sure to keep it all in sync.
With that amount of waterchange normaly no traceelement additions are to be made, but to be sure to also support elements that are not to be found in TM-salt. I add reduced amounts of them from changing supliers. With Grotech dosing pumps I add Mrutzek Organotrace (organic bound traceelements) and also Sr (grow-pusher) from Mrutzek and Iodine from Mrutzek or QFI or “Betaisodona” (”PVP” complex).

In the afternoon after the lights went out, I (from time to time) add 20ml of Mrutzek aminoacid-mix, mixed with some dried Phytoplancter replacements from Faunamarin and some dried Zooplancter replacements from Tropic Marin by hand.

Some RowaPhos in a slow flowing fluidised bed filter is used to reduce PO4 a little.
NO3 is not detectable but shurely is there ’cause corals are growing quite fast. Seems that the corals are quite fast in catching it ;-). I plan to add some NaNO3, to raise NO3 in the system.

Every 3 or 4 months 500g of Grotech ActiveCarbon are put in a little sack in the filtersump for about 3 days to reduce organic products that are not removed in other ways (biologicaly) etc..