Kalk: Alternatives?

It seems unlikely that you can run a successful sal****er tank without
understanding at least a little chemistry. Kalkwasser is pretty easy to
do,
and if that troubles you then I wonder about the other aspects of water
chemistry for you (test kits, nitrate cycle, mixing up new sal****er,
etc.).

I beg to differ with you: I understand nothing about chemistry and my tank
does fine for 5 years now. I never had Chemistry in school, I do know how to
read a test kit and do water changes. But to be perfectly honest, other
then matching colors against a color chart and knowing where my levels
should be, and using a hydrometer and knowing where that needs to be..I
don't understand a lick of it. Then again I only have a FOWLR. I would love
to do corals but not understanding chemistry, its seems like to much work
for me.

It seems unlikely that you can run a successful sal****er tank without
understanding at least a little chemistry. Kalkwasser is pretty easy to
do, and if that troubles you then I wonder about the other aspects of
water chemistry for you (test kits, nitrate cycle, mixing up new
sal****er, etc.).

"Peter Pan" wrote on Fri, 8 Sep 2006 :
I beg to differ with you: I understand nothing about chemistry and my tank
does fine for 5 years now. I never had Chemistry in school, I do know how to
read a test kit and do water changes.

You do understand that reading a test kit is simple chemistry, right?

You realize that fish produce ammonia waste, bacteria convert that to
nitrites, other bacteria convert that to nitrates, right? That's (simple)
chemistry too.

But to be perfectly honest, other then matching colors against a color
chart and knowing where my levels should be

What happens if your levels are wrong? Surely it takes a little understanding
of what's going on in the tank in order to diagnose the problem.

and using a hydrometer and knowing where that needs to be..I don't
understand a lick of it. Then again I only have a FOWLR. I would love to do
corals but not understanding chemistry, its seems like to much work for me.

I don't see how corals require any harder chemistry than sal****er fish.
They're simply more sensitive, so you can't let your water get as toxic as
you can with fish. But other than that, it's basically the same.

How is mixing kalkwasser any harder than mixing new sal****er? In fact, it's
easier, since with sal****er you need to be sure you end up with the right
density, whereas kalkwasser "automatically" winds up at the right place if you
put enough kalk in the mixture. (The excess precipitates out before you use
it.)

Corals (often) require stronger lighting, and cleaner water, than fish. But
other than that, I don't see how a fear of "chemistry" should keep you from
them. The chemistry isn't significantly different between a FOWLR tank and
a reef tank with corals.

-- Don
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Don Geddis http://reef.geddis.org/
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