Manual vs Dosing vs Kalkwasser

[Curren007K]

I have a 180G mixed reef with a basement 20G mech filter (skimmer tank) and 150G refugium, total volume of water is 300G.

I've been a manual guy for a while now, mixing and add suppliments as needed between water changes.
As my live stock of coral has gone up so has the demand for suppliments, I'm considering either utilizing a dosing pump for CA/dKH/MG or kalk in my RODI reservoir.
My RODI reservoir is a 55G brute, plumbed to an external pump thats wired to a switch.
I flip the switch to top of the tank every other day ranging from roughly 3-5 gallons, so my assumption is I would need to implement an actual, much slower ATO system like the Osmolator if I wanted to utlize kalk.

I wanted to get other Reefer's opinions on the two methods.
What size are their systems, what method they chose, how they implimented them, safety precuations, etc?

 

[Curren007K]

Whoa! Easy now fellers, don't everybody chime in at once.

 

[JohnK]

Automated kalk dosing works great but you have to be careful. If it's not somehow limited, any leak, or water otherwise lost (skimmer overflow, bagging frags and forgetting to replace what you remove exct....) can / will cause an overdose which with kalk can very easily nuke an entire system fast.

Also note that Kalk WILL consistently clog up any pump you run it through other than a good quality peristaltic pump.

So....

One thing you can do is have the kalk dosing system connected through a PH controller or complete system controller, set up so that if the PH rises above a set point the kalk will be shut off.

Another approach is to run the kalk drip using a peristaltic pump that is not capable of delivering any more than a tiny bit more than is normally consumed in a given time frame. (I use a peristaltic pump that moves something like 1.5 gallons per day, and I have a total of about 1.75 gallons of evaporation daily depending on season, and then a separate RO top off to make up the difference)

 

[cilyjr]

A heavy demand tank (ie full of large stony coral) can test the limits of kalk Wasser.
Kalk has a high ph and if its dripped too fast it can increase ph. Systems with very high calcium and alkalinity demands can max out kalkwasser because in order to get the calcium and alkalinity you need it would need to trip too quickly and pH would begin to increase.

 

[Bao]

Just buy a BulkReefSupply dosing pumps and some controller from Homedepot or use an Apex if you have one.
It is just much easier and simpler to use a dosing pumps.