Balling and Trace dilutions

[Mo.]

Hi

I made up my Balling solutions for the first time today.
I used the doses suggested in the FM manual.
ie 2KG salt to 5L RO. I made up 10L of each as I had the 10L containers and large tubs of salt.I will be using this on my larger system early next year.

On my small system (500L) I have been keeping Ca to 410 with 5ml per day of Salifert Coral Ca. I have also dosed Salifert Mag solution 5ml/ day (MG 1310). 7ml KH powder. KH 8.00.

With the Salifert Ca, that's 160g/L, so 5ml/day gives me 0.8g/day. Ca usage. With the Balling solutions as I made up today, 0.8g Ca2+ is 2ml.

Although a rough figure, it seems a very small volume to dose??.
Should I be dosing this small volume in divided doses?. Is the GHL Profilux autodosers easily able to mange these small volumes?

Are most people with well established SPS tanks only dosing around 10ml Balling Calcium Chloride give or take?. As that would be what I would expect from my calculations.....

Also, for adding trace minerals. The bottle said to use 71.5g of Ca chloride per liter of RO for the calcium solutions.... ie different to what the manual says!. That is nearly 6x less than what the balling light manual says!! and what I diluted today. I suppose they just use more volumes!...

However, the Ultratrace B Strontium and Heavy Metal bottles say to add 50ml of each to 10L of the relevant solution.
If you go according to the label, you would have 5ml of strontium and 5ml of Heavy metal complex per 71.5g Calcium chloride ie in 1 litre.

If you go according to the manual or FM website, you would add 25ml of each solution to 5L of salt solution. For the Calcium solution, that is 25ml of each for 2KG of Calcium Chloride!. (not 357.5g). That is a big difference!!.

If you dose the solution as suggested by the manual, you would end up dosing a few ml of calcium chloride solution.

If you dose what is on the labels of all of the bottles, you dose roughly six times more volume. This means that if you follow the label, your trace dosing is 6x more than the trace dosing if you follow the manual.

ie, either the manual or the label has not allowed for the difference in concentrations of the calcium/ Magnesium salt solutions.


So what do I do with my trace solutions?. I have actually made up 10L of each salt solution. and don't know how much trace to add into each container.......the equivalent dose to what the label says would be around 150ml of each trace solution to my made up solutions.

Also, is it better to use the Ultra Trace B solutions, or the UltraPower Trace solutions for the Ultralith, as I am using both Ultralith and Balling.......

I hope you followed my ramblings and would be grateful for the advice.....

Thanks
Mo

[gattsps]

hello mate i use the fauna salts for balling on my sps tank which has atleast 20 acro s in 500l . i have to dose 100ml per day of cal using 400grams of calcium powder , **** loads basically .and 250 gr of mag hex/70 gr hept hydrate , 100ml of sodium carbonate using 220 grams of salts ,
its a struggle also to keep them in solution , you tend to get a massive hit at the bottom of the barrel ,
i personally dont like them and io am looking to change ,
what the salifert additives you are using mate ???interested ,
cheers gattsps ,
obviously all this depends on the load and consumption in your tank but i dont think you will go far on just 10ml a day ,

[instantsquid]

If you've made all your solutions up with 2 kg into 5 litres of RO, I'm afraid you've just chosen "Balling Lite".
"Classic Balling" requires balanced solutions to be made so that equal quantities of each can be dosed.

[Mo.]

As long as I use the same concentrations when I make up the solutions each time, I don't think there should be a problem with Balling Lite?. As you say, I would have to dose Ca,Mg and Bicarb individually and work out volumes to dose for each one. It would seem though that gives a slight degree more control when you finally work out what your tank generally needs as you can vary each independently. I think classic Balling MG and Ca can be combined....

Also, as the concentration is far higher with Light than classic balling, I can just recalculate to classic balling dilutions if I really needed to?.....

Are there any problems with Balling Light?. "I'm afraid you've just chosen "Balling Lite"" makes it sound like I made a mistake....

gattsps, the salifert aren't a replacement for Balling. I was just dosing manually to keep concentrations up. They are freely available additives. I think they would work ok for small tanks, but not large SPS systems.

Thanks
Mo

[instantsquid]

There are many ways to skin a cat (!) - I didn't mean it to sound like you'd made a mistake, just that I wasn't sure whether you realised you didn't have balanced solutions. Apologies if you already knew that :)
You can, of course just adjust the solutions to match your tank's consumption - this is exactly what Claude describes in his Balling Lite manual.
The reason I prefer the Full Balling approach is that it also uses a NaCl-free salt. This is added in equal amount (once in solution) to the calcium chloride and sodium bicarbonate solutions. At the same time, tank water equalling the total amount of the three solutions added, is removed from the tank - this counteracts any increase in salinity.

[Mo.]

Thanks.

That clears up a few things.

Becasue the classic Balling method is balanced, you can add a similar amount of NaCL free salts to balance the NaCl produced by the chemical additions.

With Balling light all 3 salts will be dosed in varying amounts, so you wouldn't know how much NaCL Free salt to dose??.

However, I would think that the overall ratios required by the tank are the same regardless of which method you choose and you could probably work out how much NACl to dose..... that aside, it's probably easier to check salinity and do 10% water change once a week, which is what I do anyway....

I suppose the classic Balling would allow you to be away for longer periods without having to worry about salinity issues in the tank?..... I guess it would be a few weeks of dosing before salinity changes became an issue?

Thanks
Mo

[Roshan]

Mo, I do something very similar to what you are doing - utilising Balling Lite. I find a regular water change solves any potential issues with regard salinity. Currently dosing manually each night as time has not allowed an automation setup - I have a reefdoser system ready to setup. Hopefully over the xmas hols I will do this but its easy enough to dose manually too.

Roshan:)

[C. Schuhmacher]

Hi Mo

With every system your salinity will increase
That is the reason why we said to make 10% Water change a week
There you need only add less Salt and you have the right salinity
easy to use

Balling light i work now since more the 15 Years
so no problem for long time using

The talk about the inbalance is a old discussion in germany in my opinion we have to much trace elements in the water so it make no difference if youproduce a little bit more sodiumchloride or not

Greets claude

[Mo.]

Thanks Claude.

How long have you been Balling, Roshan?. What size system etc and what volumes are you using?

Thanks
Mo