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how much calcium
- Thread starter Bryan
- Start date
Bryan said:
What kind of test kit are you using and how old is it. 600 is impossible to obtain without signifcant dosing (either 2 part, Kalwasser, or Calcium reactor.
Take a sample to your LFS and let them check it.
For CA testing, Salifert or API are pretty good (with Salifert being the most accurate)
A few risks with using ionic Calcium Chloride as the supplement:
You run the risk of precipitating out the calcium.
You also may run into high pH.
You will lose alkalinity.
Chlorine may build up in the tank.
I'm curious why you are dosing so much calcium without testing. Are you sure your calcium is that high and not inaccurate testing? Are you shaking the test tube after each drop and each drop is titrated uniformly from the bottle in a total vertical manner? Are you using the final blue endpoint as your basis for the calcium levels? (sometimes that doesn't get reached till many drops later and is why API kits are not the best).
You run the risk of precipitating out the calcium.
You also may run into high pH.
You will lose alkalinity.
Chlorine may build up in the tank.
I'm curious why you are dosing so much calcium without testing. Are you sure your calcium is that high and not inaccurate testing? Are you shaking the test tube after each drop and each drop is titrated uniformly from the bottle in a total vertical manner? Are you using the final blue endpoint as your basis for the calcium levels? (sometimes that doesn't get reached till many drops later and is why API kits are not the best).
i thought purple up was just alk or atleast mostly alk
It's mostly alk with amino acids and some calcium. I think you are reading the results wrong. On the API kits, I read the very first color change as being the indicator. It should go from light purple to sudden dark purple. That is your result. It should've turned blue after next 1 or 2 drops. The indicator has probably gone bad. Forget trying to reach blue. If you actually let it sit for a half hour, it might turn blue. Your calc isn't as high as you think. Try a different calc kit.
Here is a little known fact for API CA kits.
Open the box in the store. On each of the bottles on the front on the top right of the label is the date of manufacture of the reagents. They don't put an expiration date but a manufacture date. With their CA kits, they can be horribly inaccurate if the regeant is more than 1 1/2 year old. In my experience they start reading load after a year from the date.
You will find that many times in the stores, they are already way over a year. Lucky for me, my LFS goes through a lot of it, so the they dates are usually only 3 months old. I primarily use Salifert, but keep a random check going with API as a sanity check.
Open the box in the store. On each of the bottles on the front on the top right of the label is the date of manufacture of the reagents. They don't put an expiration date but a manufacture date. With their CA kits, they can be horribly inaccurate if the regeant is more than 1 1/2 year old. In my experience they start reading load after a year from the date.
You will find that many times in the stores, they are already way over a year. Lucky for me, my LFS goes through a lot of it, so the they dates are usually only 3 months old. I primarily use Salifert, but keep a random check going with API as a sanity check.