Should I dose Kalk Powder in my ATO for Zoos?

[joem1cha3l]

I haven't dosed anything before in any of my past tanks and I plan to run a mainly SPS tank. However, I do plan to run 2 dosers in the future.

Being that my tank is fairly new, I plan start slow (nothing good happens fast) and run zoos only for the first month or two. Should I dose Kalk in my ATO water or no? Would it be advantageous to? Or is there something different that would be better?

[thegrun]

You need to test weekly for alkalinity and calcium, keeping a log of your results. It is likely that your water changes is all you need right now to keep up with demand, but if you see your alkalinity or calcium dropping then you can switch to Kalk until it too can no longer keep up with demand. Try reading through the chemistry articles at the top of this forum:
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh....php?t=1031074
and then the pertinent articles in the chemistry forum:
http://archive.reefcentral.com/forum...hreadid=102605

[worm5406]

Good test results can help you see a pattern. Once you do start dosing this same graph will help you realize that things are getting out of wack. High Alk can cause many problems.

I am dosing Ca and Alk, plus a few other things.

[ReefsandGeeks]

+1 to thegrun. zoas are not highly demanding for Ca or Alk, however if you plan on going for SPS dominated tank, you will need to suppliment when you start them. kalk in your ato is a good way so start, as it's cheap and easy. The problem only comes when saturated kalk can't keep up with your tank's demand for Ca and alk. This woun't likely be the case at first with your sps frags, but as they start to grow, their demand will go up. at that point you can do other stuff like 2 part. Try to keep in mind that stable peramiters are oftem more beneficial than quickly changing perameters, even if the new perameters are better. Always test before dosing, as over dosing is often worst than not dosing at all.

for now, there should be no need to dose for just zoas

[Sk8r]

Kalk is for stony coral or clams. What you SHOULD track for a softie or fishonly tank is alkalinity. [8.3-9] Alk is related to cal and mg, and cannot stay up if those two aren't in balance, but your water changes should be enough to see to that. If you find that your cal won't stay about 420 and your mg about 1300 without dosing kalk, you might start dosing just a bit and seeing if that would stabilize it, but generally if you use a good reef salt, it will be stay in the good zone.

[tmz]

Salt mix may handle it as soft corals need alk and calcium but use less than stony corals , coraline and other organisms that calcify more heavily. Otherwise kalk or a two part product for calcium and alk or baking soda and calcium chloride will. Testing alk is the most important. Magnesium should be ok via waterchanges since it depletes slowly.