I was wondering if anyone was dosing there tank with lime?Ive had a hard time keeping my calc up.I satrted dosing last night so ill post my results in a couple of days.
I've used Kalkwasser (sounds so much more sophisticated than "lime water" :-) for many years now. Most people agree that using Kalk alone it's very hard to keep up calcium levels, especially if you have a high demand tank. This does depend on how much water you can evaporate in a day to replace with Kalk. Because of this, I use both Kalk and Two Little Fishies brand "C-Balance", one of the many two part calcium/alkalinity supplements that is sold (I've used others, ESV, Kent, etc). I like C-Balance because it's cheaper to ship, it's sold in concentrated 1 gallon containers that are only about 1/4 full when they ship them that you add your own RO water to. I mix up at least a gallon on Kalk a day, sometimes two on off days when the sump is really low. Mix in about two teaspoons of powder per gallon, and it often won't all dissolve, then I drip in the clear liquid. I could probably do without the Kalk as my tank isn't that high demand on calcium, but I've found in my tank that if I use both Kalk and 2 part, something about it causes coralline to grow much better than with either supplement alone. Also, dripping Kalk can precipitate phosphates as well, which isn't a bad side effect if you need it. Drip it in a high flow area, preferably away from pump intakes (lime can really gunk up pumps if it precipitates out on impellers and pump shafts).
I evaporate a little over 2 gallons a day.The line from the pump emptys into my overflo so it hits rubble in my sump before it hits the return pump.Im also weighing out the costs vs the anount of 2 part that I use.It wasnt so bad when I had my 58 gallon system but now I have 150 gallons of water to deal with.
Two gallons a day and you might be able to do fairly well. At worst you may be able to cut down the two-part significantly, softening the hit on the old wallet. While I've heard people using pickling lime without problems, I've always just bought a big jug of Kalkwasser powder and it last quite a while. It's probably the same as pickling lime, but then I never remember to look for pickling lime when I'm at the grocery store anyway...
I think its like 1.98 at reasors for a 1 lb container.