Has anyone used B-Ionic or C-Balance. What were the effects?

[shallowreef]

I started my SPS tank dosing it with B-ionic. After a few weeks of using it my acros began to bleach. At least thats what my LFS guy told me. Now i'm talking to another and they want me to try C-Balance. I'm not crazy about trying a new product that may lead to similar effects. I'm in the midst of purchasing a Co2 sytem (if i can find one thats cheap enough that is) or building one. But until then i'm dosin' it. Have any of you used these products? Did they work? which is better? Why did i have such bad luck?

 

[DonW]

Probably not the B-ionic itself, it works fine. Check your water parameters.

Don

 

[steve-s]

How much are you adding of each, what time of day, in what order and what water volume?

Some of the more potent brands like ESV will impact the pH some which could definately have an effect on your colonies. It was one of the reasons I switched to the C-Balance (still use kalk a few times a week) was the lower pH impact on the chemistry.

C-Balance works a decent maintenance on the chemistry and does not spike the pH as much. The "Reef chemistry" calculator link shows that you need much more of it than the ESV but that has not been my experience. It's basically the same dosage amounts in a given water volume. As long as your rate of depletion is not too great, this stuff will keep up quite nicely.

Cheers
Steve

 

[shallowreef]

well i'm dosing ESV Kalkwasser now, and so far so good. When i was adding B-ionic i took a SOLO brand plastic cup and filled to the bottom rim of the cup with B-ionic. I added it to the sump every night as far away from my pump as i could. I did this before i went to bed adding part 1 first then part 2. Now if i switch to Co2 i can kiss all this aggrivation goodbye?

 

[steve-s]

When i was adding B-ionic i took a SOLO brand plastic cup and filled to the bottom rim of the cup with B-ionic. I added it to the sump every night as far away from my pump as i could. I did this before i went to bed adding part 1 first then part 2.

Doesn't help much at all, sorry. There's no reference to tank water volume and Solo drinking cups have a wide range of sizes which wouldn't help knowing for that matter.

Need to know tank water volume vs ml of additives used to guage any impact on the system.

As far as when your adding, night time is not a very wise choice. The pH of the water is usually at it's peak due to the increase throughout the day of O2 from photosynthesis. You are best off using these types of additives first thing in the AM before the lights come on as it will have a much lower overall impact on the daily shift in pH. The Kalk is fine at that time as it's added slowly (drops/sec) as apposed to all at once so the change is gradual if at all.

Now if i switch to Co2 i can kiss all this aggrivation goodbye?

Whole different beast altogether. You'll have some challenges with set up, tuning and weekly maintenance but not the same daily additions.

Cheers
Steve

 

[richard55]

When dosing AYTHING you need to watch the levels closely. You can over do anything, watch PH and calcium, alk, all can get out of whack.

 

[clayswim]

I agree with everything that's been said, but I wanted to point out that you should do as much reading as possible before switching to a calcium reactor. Check out the Equipment and DIY forums for some good info on setup and maintenance, and be sure to read up on the basics of pH, calcium and alkalinity. Even those of us who have been at this for years need to look over it every once in a while. This is a good place to start... http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-04/rhf/feature/index.php

Here's another link, this time on calcium reactors... http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-05/sh/feature/index.php

Now I'm sounding like Nikki, lol

Clayton

 

[shallowreef]

Thanks for the links clayswim. Vey useful. Do you have a Co2 system?

 

[clayswim]

At the moment I'm only running CO2 on two freshwater planted tanks, only as a fertilizer of course. I took a break from saltwater for a while, so right now I only have two nano tanks setup, which hardly require a calcium reactor. I'll be building a reactor for my big tank when it finally gets setup sometime in the next few months (I got rid of all my equipment from before).

Clayton

 

[shallowreef]

I think i'm gonna just buy a Co2 system and end this confusion. I mean i need to be accurate. I've invested so much into my tank already why blow it by simple miscalcuations. Does anybody disagree with me because this is something i've been debating over for a long time.

 

[clayswim]

Disastrous miscalculations can be made with calcium reactors too. It can take a while to fine-tune the CO2 and effluent rates for example. This is much easier with a pH controller, but it still takes a lot of adjusting to get everything right. The point is to get the pH to a level at which the media will breakdown, which means pumping the reactor full of CO2. Decreasing the effluent rate helps to bring the pH down, but it also cuts down on how much calcium actually enters the tank. Raise the effluent and you get lots of calcium in the tank, but at a high cost of CO2. Then you have the issue of how long to run the CO2 and how often. If it runs all the time your tank will have too much calcium, which drops the alkalinity of the water. Because the alkalinity is low the extra CO2 in the water from the reactor can cause a severe drop in pH. I'm not trying to talk you out of one, but they're not the easiest piece of equipment to use. Once you do get them setup correctly though, they pretty much take care of themselves.

Clayton

 

[big t]

I ran my sps 90 for over a year w/ just using a nilson reactor (kalk mixer) W/ this method I had to do regular dosing of baking soda (ph buffer) to attempt to keep the alk anywhere near where it was supposed to be. About 4 months ago I started running a calcium reactor again ( I had taken a break from on for over a year) and now I am a happy boy. I use both the nilson and calcium reactors now and they seem to be doing a great job together. I do have a high calcium demand tank. If your tank is not does not have too high of a calcium demand then do start w/ a nilson reactor. They are a lot cheaper to get going and do a good job of making kalk dosing very easy. When using a calcium reactor you do need to keep a close eye on ph, so I recommend using a monitor to be able to easily check where your tank is at. You also need to keep a close eye on alk because a calcium reactor can blow it way out of proportion rather quickly. So if you do decide to go w/ a calcium reactor you should check your levels daily for a month or so to keep a eye on the trends and make appropriate adjustments. Here is a great link to read to help you set up your calcium reactor when you do get one.
http://home.comcast.net/~jdieck1/reactor.html
and here is a link to a easy to make calcium reactor, all you really need is a table saw and a drill.
http://www.melevsreef.com/dj88.html