Turbo Calcium

[Reptoreef]

OK, el cheapo, here. After some time research and personal deliberation, I have chosen to add some turbo calcium to my system. Ya see, I had a calcium reactor that appeared to be running as designed and realized that although the it appeared to be doing it's job, the effluent was clogged, so no additives where being dosed. The calcium in the system dropped to around 200 with an alk of 13 DKH.
So, I dosed the calcium... no big deal right? Well, I'm a DIYer from the word go and extremely "frugle" or as Shultz says, "cheap". My research took me from the purchase of Turbo Calcium to a few other choices, they included the following:
Dowflake-harder to find, not as potent(up the dose to achieve desired effects), but pure as turbo calcium, inexpensive
Peladow-Easier to find, equally as potent as turbo calcium, inexpensive, but a 20 min drive away(I'm impatient, too)
Prestone Driveway Heat-repackaged peladow, cheap, and close(at autozone)
I chose the driveway heat and added 17 tsps of it today(i'll post the results tomorrow of another ca test). Anybody use this before???

[dakar]

Holy smokes... 17 tsp? Think you are gonna have a snowstorm going here shortly. I found a place for dowflake, a couple of tbsp to 2 gallons of water, slowly dripped a gallon in overnight... next morning calcium was off the chart, and it precip'd even though I was using BBS in the same fashion alk jumped to 14+dKh.

Hope you don't need your snow shovel.

[davejnz]

I've been having to supplement a lot of Liquid calcium as well.Been looking for a source of DowFlake,PM me if you could ship some down to me.FYI,12ml of Kents liquid calcium is enough to balance out 1tsp baking soda.

[Reptoreef]

Everything is as good as I wanted... ca measures 370 so I added 11 more tsps to reach 475. Now that the reactor is back on line, things should remain stable... just more frequent exams of the other things that help this machine(the tank) to run at par.

[jerryc]

Rapto i never even heard of someone using it Wier did you come up with that

[Reptoreef]

A lot of advice from local reefers in the club and a lot of aditional research on sites like Reef Central.