I ordered that stir bar, thank you for the tip!!!! I probably would have returned the thing without this video and that would have been very disappointing because I love the design. I got my 150 yesterday and for the life of me I can't get the one it came with to mix the kalk or couple up with the magnets. It was fine before Kalk went in, but now that its' not clear at the bottom it keeps jumping off and ending up at the edge of the reactor, I can't wait for the longer bar to arrive.
I have the 120 version, I've been dealing with versa head height issues. I am using this kalk reactor on an aio system. I have the stirer installed above the tank. I was pulling water from my ato 3' below the reactor and pushing through the reactor, gravity feeding to the rear chamber of my aio tank. The versa couldn't handle the head height. I tried installing a back check valve before the versa pump the eliminate the back siphon issues I was having. It worked well for a week until the back check valve became clogged. I also had to run the versa at 12ml a minute to get 1 drop per second because of the head height issue with the versa. Today when I got home, I noticed no drip out of the gravity feed line. I removed the lines and made sure they were clear and not clogged, reprised the lines and still no drip out the gravity feed. I have to turn the versa up to 80ml a min to get 1 drop a second out of the gravity drip line. I decided this wasn't going to work. I ended up removing the line from my ato and installed a new separate reservoir above the kalk reactor. I primed the line and reprogrammed the versa @ 1ml per minute. It's working flawlessly so far. No more 10-80ml per minute on the versa to produce 1 drop a second. Thought I'd share. Sorry for the essay. I do have a question though. Is there a way to pause the versa via mobious during stir times or do you need to use a controller like Apex or ghl and or a timer to do this?
Check to make sure the tube inside of your versa didnt ride forward. do you have the little retainer ring in yours? Ih yave a versa pushing up 15'+ so head height isnt an issue for these pumps. I suspect you have a air leak or you dont have the retainer ring and the tube isnt getting fully compressed. one of the two. If you wanted pause for cleaning you could create a scene to do it.
Hi there. Did I miss why you wouldn't just add as much powder as the stir bar would be able to spin? If I understood it correctly the kalwasser solution can only have a certain concentration, and as such it would just slowly dissolve over time when new water is pumped into the reactor. Also for keeping the reactor topped up with power, have you tried using an autofeeder?
If you add to much the bar will spin out. thats the main reason. I do add some every wek or to to bump up potency. Auto feeder - you dont want it exposed to air, hence the top ceiling.
Great video Davin and I have one too , the problem that I have with this reactor that if the cap is sealed no kalkwasser will come out and you f release it little bit it will work fine , so it’s ok to do that or this will effect the quality of the kalkwasser? Thanks in advance for your input
Keep the cap air tight. Upgrade your outlet to 3/8" straight out, and add a elbow on the inside to pull from below the kalk film on top. On the outside outlet, add a 3/8" - 1/4" - 3/8" tee with about six inches of 1/4" line facing up. This will act as a good vacuum break and prevent back pressure in the stirrer. You want to keep the kalk as air free as you can for as long as you can as it will scrub CO2 out of the air, and then less out of your tank. You will have a little air exchange in the drain tube from the vacuum break but not much. Way better then opening the cap and having it constantly breath in and out with a water level change.
Saw you video with the Rock Flower Anmones tank and it was really an insporation for my Nuvo 25. Also saw you had a Dragonete in your nano and am wondering how you had success with that? The green manderine is a fish I really desire but many say its virtially imossible to keep them in small tanks, can you share your secrets? Thanks a lot you have really great tanks!
@reefdudes I have a question that I hope you may be able to answer for me. How much alkalinity and calcium does a full strength kalkwasser solution(1 cup kalk) have at a 1ml dose? Just received my new Ice Cap kalkwasser reactor and am new to kalkwasser dosing, I would love to not mess this up first time around. I purchased the same reactor along with brs pharma kalk. Thank you for any info and tips ahead of time.
Too bad they are not just using a rotating (stepping) magnetic field instead of an actual motor to spin the magnet. On the end of the tube getting gunked up, how about putting the end under water with a hole to break siphon? Would that work? Something to try? Thanks for reviewing this. Very interesting. I'm just about to get back into the hobby after a decade out. Amazing number of things have changed, improvements almost always. Lots more knowledge. PS. Thank you for being metric and by weight! :)
The siphon break idea for it going under water is an interesting one. Not sure if it will still build up int he tube or no but once i find a T valve ill give it a try.. you got me curious :)
Thanks for the video!! I run a Avast Marine Kalk Stirrer almost the same way... I run mine off a single BRS peralistic pump thats all connected to my APEX Controller.
Great video, I just purchased the same mixer and also had to upgrade the stir bar...just wondering, I think I heard you mentioned you had your KALK dosing all day with the exception of the times the mixer is on and the 14 minutes of sediments to settle, can you hear the pump pumping water in the mixer? I am using one of the Komera wifi X1 Pro, and that is a bit loud to have it running 24hrs (at least for me), what pump would you recommend that is silent, but not pricy for something like this.
Hi Devin Don’t think we can get the Ice Cap Reactor in Australia. Do you think it would work with an adaptor plug into Australian 240 v power? If so I could buy on Amazon .
How long did 1 cup last you? Just got a KM-200 finally today to replace the TLF300 and the Tunze ones I've been running simultaneously but not enough capacity.
Another great video! I am curious about the drip speed. You use 1 ml/min. However, some folks add kalk to their ATO and that must be dosed at much higher speeds. What's the basis for the 1 ml/min. Cheers!
Its what is keeping may alkalinity stable! if my alk is trending down increase flow. if its going up you decrease it. simple way to dial in your dosing :)
Deven, a couple other questions. Have they addressed the stir bar issue since the video? Also, do you leave the RODI pressured up to feed that ATO reservoir or how does that work?
Was your drain line fitting able to be turned easily? Mine is so gunked up with epoxy and aimed straight down. I built a 4” platform for mine and it still drains so slow the tube cakes up and overflows. Emailing coralvue has been a joke, all I got was “ I don’t have any advice “ from them
The bulkhead is epoxied in. The fitting itself is threaded into the bulkhead. Mine looked the same way because the threads were flush with the bulkhead. I changed my elbow to a 3/8 output.
Looking at switching to kalk reactor from two-part. Only dosing 42ml a day two part. Looking to increase Ph. What does your tanks ph run with the kalk reactor? High and low. Thanks.
I have an Avast Stirr and use a pH probe to monitor the Kalk. I find that very easy to use. In 1 wk, the ph drop from 11.7 to 9 after adding 1teaspoon Kalk. When the ph gets to 9, I add another teaspoon. Question, How often should i empty out and clean out the reactor?
Its prob overfkill but i clean mine monthly ad add all new powder.. thats about when the output starts to drop. I could prob add a scoop a week and prolong it. How often do you maintain your PH probe in there?
So the inflow to the tank has to be less than evaporation so you don’t overfill, 1m an hour or 2m an hour won’t effect the water level, in theory you have a lot of room to dose higher. Totally negating the need for two part or a calcium reactor and higher PH. I’m thinking I might do the same on my new waterbox frag.
Major issue with this reactor however is the fact it has an undersized outlet port which is prone to clogging. Now, if this were a sealed system where the center opening is for adding new kalkwasser powder was able to be locked down to prevent leaking - this would be great. however, it is NOT and will leak if the outlet is ever clogged (which it is prone to). A simple fix to make this system great? make the fill hole cap able to be locked down to create an air/water tight seal and the pressure would prevent clogging in the output line. making a graqvity fedd system on the output line was just plain lazy
I have not used the avast one so cant say for sure on the comparison. At the end of the day they do the same job of mixing kalk, one has a stir paddle the other use a magnetic stir bar
It looks like maybe you are using your wall as a green screen. You can paint the electrical plate if that is why you are not using a plate, they even have wood ones. Many receptacles have metal on the side that is hot all the time. If this is how your receptacle is designed any child that sticks their finger inside that box could be killed. Most electrocutions happen at 120v in the U.S and I am sure the same statistic goes for whatever commie voltage Canada uses 🍁. Also any water running down that wall is going to have much more of a tendency to enter that box. The plate is considered part of that installation and should always be left on. If you are going to die make sure it’s at least some glorious tank explosion because of a dosing disaster.
You can unscrew the 2 thumbscrews holding on the acrylic cylinder and measure it. I suspect they all use the same motor but thats the easy way to check.
I ordered that stir bar, thank you for the tip!!!! I probably would have returned the thing without this video and that would have been very disappointing because I love the design. I got my 150 yesterday and for the life of me I can't get the one it came with to mix the kalk or couple up with the magnets. It was fine before Kalk went in, but now that its' not clear at the bottom it keeps jumping off and ending up at the edge of the reactor, I can't wait for the longer bar to arrive.
Nice !👍
Hopefully IceCap catches wind of that magnet upgrade tip. A bit odd they didn’t realize that themselves hey?!
Cheers 🍻
Your videos are awesome. I appreciate how much I have learned from your videos.
Happy to hear it helps!
I have the 120 version, I've been dealing with versa head height issues. I am using this kalk reactor on an aio system. I have the stirer installed above the tank. I was pulling water from my ato 3' below the reactor and pushing through the reactor, gravity feeding to the rear chamber of my aio tank. The versa couldn't handle the head height.
I tried installing a back check valve before the versa pump the eliminate the back siphon issues I was having. It worked well for a week until the back check valve became clogged. I also had to run the versa at 12ml a minute to get 1 drop per second because of the head height issue with the versa.
Today when I got home, I noticed no drip out of the gravity feed line. I removed the lines and made sure they were clear and not clogged, reprised the lines and still no drip out the gravity feed. I have to turn the versa up to 80ml a min to get 1 drop a second out of the gravity drip line.
I decided this wasn't going to work. I ended up removing the line from my ato and installed a new separate reservoir above the kalk reactor. I primed the line and reprogrammed the versa @ 1ml per minute. It's working flawlessly so far. No more 10-80ml per minute on the versa to produce 1 drop a second.
Thought I'd share. Sorry for the essay.
I do have a question though. Is there a way to pause the versa via mobious during stir times or do you need to use a controller like Apex or ghl and or a timer to do this?
Check to make sure the tube inside of your versa didnt ride forward. do you have the little retainer ring in yours? Ih yave a versa pushing up 15'+ so head height isnt an issue for these pumps. I suspect you have a air leak or you dont have the retainer ring and the tube isnt getting fully compressed. one of the two.
If you wanted pause for cleaning you could create a scene to do it.
Great 👍 review, full of good info, appreciated. 👍🏴
Thanks John!
How is the ICE CAP working? Still good? Customer Service good?
The most elusive of all dosing pumps the Versa.
Ecotech said not available till june
Kalk also percitpates out phosphates. I dose kalk at night
Hi there.
Did I miss why you wouldn't just add as much powder as the stir bar would be able to spin? If I understood it correctly the kalwasser solution can only have a certain concentration, and as such it would just slowly dissolve over time when new water is pumped into the reactor.
Also for keeping the reactor topped up with power, have you tried using an autofeeder?
If you add to much the bar will spin out. thats the main reason. I do add some every wek or to to bump up potency. Auto feeder - you dont want it exposed to air, hence the top ceiling.
Brilliant! Thanks Dev!!
Davin another awesome video, you make it look so easy and definitely worth going that rote for my new frag system. Thank you
I really am amazed at how well everything is doing on just kalk.. its taking me way further than i expected.
Definitely think about it 😉
I need this! Eventually. :)
Great video Davin and I have one too , the problem that I have with this reactor that if the cap is sealed no kalkwasser will come out and you f release it little bit it will work fine , so it’s ok to do that or this will effect the quality of the kalkwasser?
Thanks in advance for your input
Keep the cap air tight. Upgrade your outlet to 3/8" straight out, and add a elbow on the inside to pull from below the kalk film on top. On the outside outlet, add a 3/8" - 1/4" - 3/8" tee with about six inches of 1/4" line facing up. This will act as a good vacuum break and prevent back pressure in the stirrer. You want to keep the kalk as air free as you can for as long as you can as it will scrub CO2 out of the air, and then less out of your tank. You will have a little air exchange in the drain tube from the vacuum break but not much. Way better then opening the cap and having it constantly breath in and out with a water level change.
Saw you video with the Rock Flower Anmones tank and it was really an insporation for my Nuvo 25. Also saw you had a Dragonete in your nano and am wondering how you had success with that? The green manderine is a fish I really desire but many say its virtially imossible to keep them in small tanks, can you share your secrets? Thanks a lot you have really great tanks!
I used to culture pods so i just added them to the tank to supplement. plus he ate frozen :)
@reefdudes I have a question that I hope you may be able to answer for me. How much alkalinity and calcium does a full strength kalkwasser solution(1 cup kalk) have at a 1ml dose? Just received my new Ice Cap kalkwasser reactor and am new to kalkwasser dosing, I would love to not mess this up first time around. I purchased the same reactor along with brs pharma kalk. Thank you for any info and tips ahead of time.
Not to sure. Just find a dose rate that keeps your alk stable Ideally use a continuous dosing pump and tweak the ml/min to keep things stable
Too bad they are not just using a rotating (stepping) magnetic field instead of an actual motor to spin the magnet.
On the end of the tube getting gunked up, how about putting the end under water with a hole to break siphon? Would that work? Something to try?
Thanks for reviewing this. Very interesting. I'm just about to get back into the hobby after a decade out. Amazing number of things have changed, improvements almost always. Lots more knowledge.
PS. Thank you for being metric and by weight! :)
The siphon break idea for it going under water is an interesting one. Not sure if it will still build up int he tube or no but once i find a T valve ill give it a try.. you got me curious :)
Thanks for the video!! I run a Avast Marine Kalk Stirrer almost the same way... I run mine off a single BRS peralistic pump thats all connected to my APEX Controller.
Sounds like a good setup!
Great video, I just purchased the same mixer and also had to upgrade the stir bar...just wondering, I think I heard you mentioned you had your KALK dosing all day with the exception of the times the mixer is on and the 14 minutes of sediments to settle, can you hear the pump pumping water in the mixer? I am using one of the Komera wifi X1 Pro, and that is a bit loud to have it running 24hrs (at least for me), what pump would you recommend that is silent, but not pricy for something like this.
Hi Devin
Don’t think we can get the Ice Cap Reactor in Australia. Do you think it would work with an adaptor plug into Australian 240 v power? If so I could buy on Amazon .
you could just replace the power adapter, its just a barrel plug that goes into the stirrer
Excellent review. Thank you.
How long did 1 cup last you? Just got a KM-200 finally today to replace the TLF300 and the Tunze ones I've been running simultaneously but not enough capacity.
Another great video! I am curious about the drip speed. You use 1 ml/min. However, some folks add kalk to their ATO and that must be dosed at much higher speeds. What's the basis for the 1 ml/min. Cheers!
Its what is keeping may alkalinity stable! if my alk is trending down increase flow. if its going up you decrease it. simple way to dial in your dosing :)
Reefdude if you are using kalkwasser. Do you still use dosing pump to dose alk, cal and magnesium. Thanks
Deven, a couple other questions. Have they addressed the stir bar issue since the video? Also, do you leave the RODI pressured up to feed that ATO reservoir or how does that work?
Thank you for the video🙏.
How much does it helps to maintain ph and alk in the system :)
so far 100%! my PH is much higher than my other tank and it keeps the alk on point.
Did you setup the profilux to control the Versa pump on and off dependant on the ph level?
What did your tds meter read after you refilled it?
have u considered just dosing kalk as your top off and removing the ato. freshwater to kalk reactor to sump
I am dosing from my ATO for more than a year and my ATO pump has held on till now without cleaning. :)
Impressive!
Was your drain line fitting able to be turned easily? Mine is so gunked up with epoxy and aimed straight down. I built a 4” platform for mine and it still drains so slow the tube cakes up and overflows. Emailing coralvue has been a joke, all I got was “ I don’t have any advice “ from them
Mine was easy enough to turn. You could drill it out and put in a larger port
@@ReefDudes how did you turn it? Mine is epoxied in.
The bulkhead is epoxied in. The fitting itself is threaded into the bulkhead. Mine looked the same way because the threads were flush with the bulkhead. I changed my elbow to a 3/8 output.
Looking at switching to kalk reactor from two-part. Only dosing 42ml a day two part. Looking to increase Ph. What does your tanks ph run with the kalk reactor? High and low. Thanks.
8-8.12 ish
Hey Devin any new video coming on GHL controller and settings you have setup on your aquarium
I have an Avast Stirr and use a pH probe to monitor the Kalk. I find that very easy to use. In 1 wk, the ph drop from 11.7 to 9 after adding 1teaspoon Kalk. When the ph gets to 9, I add another teaspoon. Question, How often should i empty out and clean out the reactor?
Its prob overfkill but i clean mine monthly ad add all new powder.. thats about when the output starts to drop. I could prob add a scoop a week and prolong it. How often do you maintain your PH probe in there?
@@ReefDudes Every 3-4 months or so. When i noticed the unsaturated slurry gets above the output tube
So the inflow to the tank has to be less than evaporation so you don’t overfill, 1m an hour or 2m an hour won’t effect the water level, in theory you have a lot of room to dose higher. Totally negating the need for two part or a calcium reactor and higher PH. I’m thinking I might do the same on my new waterbox frag.
Devin, which conductivity probe are you using to check the kalk? Thanks!
I would have liked to know what you're ph parameters are using the reactor.
At this current second 8.29 :)
Which model do you have??
Major issue with this reactor however is the fact it has an undersized outlet port which is prone to clogging. Now, if this were a sealed system where the center opening is for adding new kalkwasser powder was able to be locked down to prevent leaking - this would be great. however, it is NOT and will leak if the outlet is ever clogged (which it is prone to). A simple fix to make this system great? make the fill hole cap able to be locked down to create an air/water tight seal and the pressure would prevent clogging in the output line. making a graqvity fedd system on the output line was just plain lazy
Yep agreed. Lots drilled the output port and put in a bigger fitting as a fix as well.
Don't you have a calcium reactor on that tank also?
Yep. I have yet to turn it on as the kalk is handling the uptake for me
@@ReefDudes so what are you doing for mag and alk?
@@jerrybeute8884 kalkwasser doses alk and calcium. Mag you can just add some once in a while
Problem is no matter where you dose kalk, unless its directly into the display the residue gets into the pumps and causes gunk.
Why? If you add it to a big enough volume of water in the Sump, then it shouldn't raise that alk in there too much
The trick is to only pump clear kalk water in. I have mine set up to not dose during, and for a half hour after each one min stir, every four hours.
Hi, do you have any pros and cons vs the Avast kalk stirrer?
I have not used the avast one so cant say for sure on the comparison. At the end of the day they do the same job of mixing kalk, one has a stir paddle the other use a magnetic stir bar
It looks like maybe you are using your wall as a green screen. You can paint the electrical plate if that is why you are not using a plate, they even have wood ones. Many receptacles have metal on the side that is hot all the time. If this is how your receptacle is designed any child that sticks their finger inside that box could be killed. Most electrocutions happen at 120v in the U.S and I am sure the same statistic goes for whatever commie voltage Canada uses 🍁. Also any water running down that wall is going to have much more of a tendency to enter that box. The plate is considered part of that installation and should always be left on. If you are going to die make sure it’s at least some glorious tank explosion because of a dosing disaster.
Yes I am using as a green screen. Haha thanks for the reminder. I’ll get in putting on a cover :)
Hey Dev
Would you know if the 60 mil stir bar would be the same for the medium reactor? Same stir motor?
You can unscrew the 2 thumbscrews holding on the acrylic cylinder and measure it. I suspect they all use the same motor but thats the easy way to check.
@@ReefDudes will do. I’ll stop being lazy lol
@@retroreefs7986 haha let me know! i'm curious. I suspect they used the same motor in all of them but never know.