Kalkwasser And 5% Acetic Acid Mix

[yorkcoparamedic]

I have been doing a lot of reading on how to properly maintain a reef tank. And if there is one thing across the board that everyone recommends, it is the use of Kalk. The only problem with using Kalk is the high pH of 12 to 12.4 and thus causing your tank to go haywire and killing off the stock if the mix is added to fast. To my amazement no one recommends adding vinegar to the mixture. I may be new to Marine tanks but not new to Chemistry. Using 5% Acetic Acid or vinegar to mix the Kalk powder in before dilution with RO water makes sense to me.

I searched for this topic across the internet until I found the following link. At least a couple of people are doing this and it works for them. Still searching for more answers.

Read this article from a forum post.

What does everyone else think? Does anyone else do this?

 

[Adrinal]

The thing is dead stuff lowers PH. Your tank is full of dead stuff.
Kalk saturated RODI water used for top of brings your tank back up in PH.
Its likely to be a wash. Other than reading articals on-line, locally, I have never heard of some one actually needing to keep their PH down... yet...

 

[Musho3210]

not just dead stuff, rotting stuff, which includes fish food which turns into fish poop (which techinally is dead i guess).

 

[SkiFletch]

But their chemistry makes assumptions that don't happen and forgets about things that do... Adding the acid to the base will combine the acid's H+ ions with the kalkwasser's OH- ion to form, you guessed it, water. But why is that a bad thing SkiFletch? It's bad because the reaction requires free OH- ions to produce bicarbonate ions in the first place. If you remove OH- ions by adding acid, you un-balance the reaction of kalkwasser. It then becomes twice as much of a calcium suppliment than it is an alkalinity suppliment. And one of the main reason to dose kalkwasser in the first place is that it is a balanced additive. Sure it neutralizes the pH problem, but leaves you with another, sadly not a complete win-win.

 

[Donya]

thus causing your tank to go haywire and killing off the stock if the mix is added to fast.

That's the case for adding most things to marine tanks too fast. Adding really slowly (such as by a dripline into a place of high turbulance) is not a bad way to go if the mixture is concentrated and highly reactive. I've never observed my kalk supplements to cause any pH shifts in the tank I use them on, but I add them by dripline rather than just dumping it in.