Woke up to a nuked tank...

[Rybren]

About 1/2 way through this article, RHF discusses Kalk overdoses.

He says:

"When limewater is substantially overdosed, the transient precipitation of magnesium hydroxide from normal use may not be the only precipitate that forms. If the pH becomes elevated and stays that way long enough, calcium carbonate can precipitate throughout the water column. In such situations, the entire aquarium can become very cloudy, looking almost like skim milk (Figures 9 and 10). Such precipitation events have the beneficial effect of lowering the pH and alkalinity that were raised by the overdose, limiting the ongoing damage that takes place. In many cases, there is no apparent harm after a day or two, but in a few rare cases, when the overdose was especially extensive, a tank crash can occur, killing many organisms.

The following important points should help in dealing with a limewater overdose:

1. Don't panic! These overdoses do not usually cause a tank to crash.

2. The primary concern is pH. If the pH is 8.6 or lower, you need not do anything. If the pH is above 8.6, then reducing the pH is the priority. Direct addition of vinegar or soda water is a good way to accomplish this goal. Either one mL of distilled white vinegar, or six mL of soda water, per gallon of tank water will give an initial pH drop of about 0.3 pH units. Add either to a high flow area that is away from organisms (e.g., a sump).

3. Do not bother to measure calcium or alkalinity while the tank is cloudy. The solid calcium carbonate particles will dissolve in an alkalinity test, and all of the carbonate in them will be counted as if it were in solution and part of "alkalinity." The same may happen to some extent with calcium tests. Wait until the water clears, and at that point, alkalinity is more likely to be low than high. Calcium will likely be mostly unchanged.

4. The particles themselves will typically settle out and disappear from view over a period of 1-4 days. They do not appear to cause long term detrimental effects to tank organisms.

5. Water changes are not necessarily beneficial or needed in response to a limewater overdose."

[Bent]

Originally Posted by d-man

Lol, step 1

Im going to need step 1 more than any other step. Thats why its step 1 and not 2.

[ericarenee]

Originally Posted by Bent

I typically keep about 30 gallons on hand of saltwater and 30 gallons of R/O, but from where I just finished up my sunday maintence and did my 20 gallon water change that night, I did not have much left since my RO is slow.

I think all in all this will have forced me to change out about 50 gallons in the last 12-24 hours. Not too bad I dont think. Im just glad I was forced to walk away from it before I did something stupid.

i see was just assuming you had NO water storage... sorry

[stingeragent]

I think something similar just happened to sk8r also.

[Bent]

Originally Posted by ericarenee

i see was just assuming you had NO water storage... sorry

No worries.

Here's a pic that I snapped before I walked out the door this am:



Edit:
Oh and that happened to him a couple years ago. I bumped his thread when I found it to thank him for posting it.

[ColinAbi]

Originally Posted by Bent

Well guys, been a good run.

Wow that scared me, I thought you were quitting.

[ericarenee]

Originally Posted by Bent

No worries.

Here's a pic that I snapped before I walked out the door this am:



Edit:
Oh and that happened to him a couple years ago. I bumped his thread when I found it to thank him for posting it.

No offence but this does not look as Bad As your Panic attack sounded... Thou i would prob have called in sick or something...

[Nina51]

Originally Posted by Bent

Oh and that happened to him a couple years ago. I bumped his thread when I found it to thank him for posting it.

pssst, if you're referring to sk8r, she's a she.

[Bent]

Originally Posted by Nina51

pssst, if you're referring to sk8r, she's a she.

Lol I'm just going to make up my own gender neutral pronoun just for the internets.

FYI, headed home to assess the damage.

[stingeragent]

I think Bent works in an ER, or ICU or something, so prolly difficult to call in.

[Bent]

Wow.

Everything is ok. It seems like buisness as usual for the animals. No one looks any worse for the wear, and truthfully there isn't much dust to vacuum out. I got all freaked out for nothing.

I filled the sump to standard operating level, checked the SG, pH, alk and Ca. Here's my results.

SG never wavered from 1.025
Alk 8.3
Calcium is way high 658

In the end, I left the kalk reactor hooked up. I'm operating under the assumption that I don't want to drop anything too fast, and while the Ca is high, it seems everything else is in order and didn't change much, if any, from yesterday's pre-disaster checks. So I'm going to stop refilling the stirrer and just let the lime slowly dissipate and the calcium to come down gradually rather than trying to get it down quickly.

How's that sound?

I cleaned the heck out of the switch and I can't figure out what happened. It wasn't that dirty, and the float was able to move up and down. Dunno, but it's working now, so we'll see.


This whole thing has me pretty freaked. I'm a plan for the worst type of guy and while my failsafes worked, if that second float switch had failed too, I don't think the results would have been so mild.

I may have to get an apex for Christmas so I can get one more (albeit expensive) redundancy.

Thanks guys and gals for all the support through this. Without you all I probably would have just tore the entire system down or done something stupid, because of my relatively short fuse and my tendency to go off the reservation when it gets lit.

Carry on!

[soulpatch]

Could have been worse on your nerves. I got a call from my wife that my ato drained my resovior which meant that it pumped some actual kalk paste into the tank. Still dont know how it happened given I have a Tunze and have checked the emergency shut off.

Regardless when I got the call I was 12 hours away from home with very limited phone signal so had to drive about an hour just to get enough signal to tell her to unplug my ato and top off with water frommy bucket through the rest of the week.

I did end up losing my clams though as they were hit with the paste some I guess...

[kmbyrnes]

Glad it all worked out. Hope you repeated step one a few times and just watched your tank!

[Tweaked]

Originally Posted by Bent

It would have been fine if it wasn't for the kalk reactor.

Why I took mine off years back after these horror stories. Also keeping your reservoir with just enough water for the day is another key. Its a pain to fill every morning, but when you are coral stocked, you need to take these steps.

[homer1475]

After reading this, it has me thinking I may need to reduce my ATO reservoir size. I currently add kalkwasser to my ATO, and have a large enough reservoir for nearly a week of top off. If mine got stuck on, not only would it overflow my tank, but dump a huge amount of kalk into my tank.

hmmm.........

Glad it's all worked out for the better bent. I also didn't know sk8r was a she! not that it matters, but you get a mental image in your head when you read certain people posts.

[Bent]

Originally Posted by homer1475

After reading this, it has me thinking I may need to reduce my ATO reservoir size. I currently add kalkwasser to my ATO, and have a large enough reservoir for nearly a week of top off. If mine got stuck on, not only would it overflow my tank, but dump a huge amount of kalk into my tank.

hmmm.........

Glad it's all worked out for the better bent. I also didn't know sk8r was a she! not that it matters, but you get a mental image in your head when you read certain people posts.

yeah, im definatley changing things up soon. I may use only a 3 gallon ato container and just fill it up as needed rather than trying to keep it hands off. Safer that way. Ill probably just use one of those left over Reef Crystals buckets.

[Tweaked]

yep, my system uses 2.5 - 3.5 gallons a day depending on seasons, and my ato reservoir is about 4 gallons.

[d2mini]

Glad to hear it turned out much better than expected.

[MondoBongo]

when i was using kalk i got one of the BRS peristaltic dosing pumps, and ran it on a timer.

that way i didn't have to worry about overdosing in any significant manner.

[Roccus]

Glad it all worked out... If I've learned anything in fish keeping or even life... panic is usual worse than the actual problem..

[CedzAquAddictio]

Glad everything worked out, Man!!!

[g_langley]

Me too Ben. I think you are one of the most entertaining posters on this forum!

Goods news.

[cheucklate]

Glad to know all is well! Now that the dust is settled, as a new reefer I am curious as to what I could do as a preventative measure if this were to ever happen to me? I'm thinking to assign Apex/Reefkeeper to turn off ATO when PH reaches 8.3+?

[DDon]

Originally Posted by cheucklate

Glad to know all is well! Now that the dust is settled, as a new reefer I am curious as to what I could do as a preventative measure if this were to ever happen to me? I'm thinking to assign Apex/Reefkeeper to turn off ATO when PH reaches 8.3+?

I use 2 float switches, 1 for control and one that shuts off ATO if it gets too high. I also have Apex set to shut off ATO if pH gets above 8.45. Setpoint would depend on what your normal pH range is.

You could also add a max time for the ATO pump to run.

[Buzz1329]

Originally Posted by DDon

How big is your system?
2 - 3 gallons of lime water may not be as bad as you think. I would check levels before I did anything else and not overreact. Doing massive water change and swinging Alk the other direction is still an Alk swing. May be better to let it drop on it's own or keep the water changes small.

For what it's worth I have hit my tank pretty hard with kalk and the livestock didn't blink an eye.
Good luck.

Agreed. About a year ago, my ATO dumped 2-3 gallons of kalkwasser into 180 and I had no major problems. Removed quart of DT water every hr or so, and used Tunze Osmo ATO pump in bucket of pure RO/DI water to replace water removed. Festina lente (make haste slowly) worked for me.

Good luck,

Mike