# [Wet Thumb Forum]-A calcium problem



## jolywoo (Mar 23, 2004)

new growth on plants are becoming bent and twisted. i'm very sure thats its a calcium defeciency. i called my water company yesterday to find that the levels for calcium is 12.8ppm and magnesium is 32ppm. total hardness is 47.6ppm. i know calcium is supposed to be higher than magnesium. 
what level should i bring calcium up to? should i leave mag as it is at 32? i want to use calcium chloride but have a hard time finding it. anyone know a place on the web that i can get this stuff? 
thanks to anyone who can help.

30gallon tank, 3.2 watts/g, eheim filter with co2


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## jolywoo (Mar 23, 2004)

new growth on plants are becoming bent and twisted. i'm very sure thats its a calcium defeciency. i called my water company yesterday to find that the levels for calcium is 12.8ppm and magnesium is 32ppm. total hardness is 47.6ppm. i know calcium is supposed to be higher than magnesium. 
what level should i bring calcium up to? should i leave mag as it is at 32? i want to use calcium chloride but have a hard time finding it. anyone know a place on the web that i can get this stuff? 
thanks to anyone who can help.

30gallon tank, 3.2 watts/g, eheim filter with co2


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## Rex Grigg (Jan 22, 2004)

http://www.midwestsupplies.com/products/additvs.asp

They have it.

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American by birth, Marine by the grace of God! This post spell checked with IESpell available at http://www.iespell.com

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## BenMontana (Feb 1, 2003)

> quote:
> 
> i want to use calcium chloride but have a hard time finding it. anyone know a place on the web that i can get this stuff?
> thanks to anyone who can help.


You will find cheaper sources, but if you go over to Absolutely Fish on Rt 3, just the other side of the GSP take a look in the salt water at Kent's Turbo Calcium (powdered calcium chloride) and Seachem's equivalent product.

Read the labels, it will only say calcium chloride (anhydrous).

Just curious: how much K do you put in your tank between water changes?


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## Roger Miller (Jun 19, 2004)

tbarb,

Do you know what units your water utility quoted those numbers in? Are they calcium as ppm hardness, or calcium as ppm calcium, magnesium as ppm hardness or magnesium as ppm magnesium?

I ask because if they are quoted as ppm of calcium or magnesium then they should total up to quite a bit more hardness. If they are quoted as ppm calcium or mangesium hardness then things add up about right and your problem is not as difficult as it might look.

Roger Miller


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## jolywoo (Mar 23, 2004)

i add about 1tsp or potassium once a week after a 50% water change to bring to about 20ppm. i see if i can pick up the kents turbo calcium at absolutly fish since i go there all the time
Roger, he didnt say anything about calcium and magnesium being ppm in hardness.

30gallon tank, 3.2 watts/g, eheim filter with co2


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## TJ (Mar 20, 2003)

Tbarb, dunno if it's true or not.

I have read on this forum somewhere, that if you put the max levels of K in the tank. It will stop the uptake of Calcium.

I am having this problem, with 30ppm of K added, and my hygro's leaves are bending.

So now after a large Water change, i am adding a little K periodically.

Not sure of conclusion as of yet. Still in test mode.

Mike

They can hide, but they cant escape


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## BenMontana (Feb 1, 2003)

tbarb,

Roger knows his stuff.

I am testing the "too high" K level myself. The results of these things tend to be anecdotal. For the past week I have virtually stopped K in the tanks with the worst deformation and pinholes and adding a wee bit of calcium.

IMO, changing tank chemistry is like turning a big ship. It takes a while. Problem is that many find it hard to be patient and alter regimens before seeing it through.

My tap water (well) gh is about 13, kh is around 8. I have no calcium buildup on plumbing fixtures and boiling out a pot of water in a dark enamel pot yields only a very, very mild off white film. This area is known for low soil calcium, so I speculate that is my problem.

I do know after a 3 week trial that the raising my dose of Flourish had a small noticeable effect.

Whatever you do, think it out first and do it long enough to see what happens before trying something else.

You will pay through the nose comparatively by using reef calcium products, but at least they are small storable containers.


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## Roger Miller (Jun 19, 2004)

tbarb,

If the numbers they gave you are ppm Ca and Mg then they total to 165 ppm hardness, which is far higher than the hardness they gave you. If the numbers are Ca hardness and Mg hardness then they add up about right.

If the values are Ca and Mg hardness then the corresponding values in ppm Ca and Mg are 5 ppm Ca and 8 ppm Mg. It makes a very big difference.

If the correct values are 5 ppm Ca and 8 ppm Mg, then your plants' problem is probably more one of having too little calcium then it is of having a bad balance. Regardless, you can solve either problem by adding a little calcium.

You can get your Ca:Mg balance back to where it probably should be by using calcium chloride or some other calcium additive to increase the total hardness by about 2 dGH. That treatment would boost the calcium from 5 ppm to about 19 ppm.


Roger Miller


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## wetmanNY (Feb 1, 2003)

Nutley NJ water department is just part of the Hackensack-Passaic watershed. There are many problems with pollution and groundwater in the Hackensack-Passaic Watershed, but high concentrations of magnesium vis-a-vis calcium isn't widely reported among local fishkeepers.

Both potassium and magnesium compete with calcium for uptake. Tom Barr has recently taken a course in plant physiology and could probably give us an enlightening web link or two on this subject.


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## jolywoo (Mar 23, 2004)

about the potassium, i forgot to mention that on my last water change, i lowered the amount of k from 1tsp to 1/2tsp after reading a couple of posts about it.
before i started seeing this deficiency, i was fixing a small algea problem. i increased the flourish and in one week the algea was gone. once the algea problem disappeared, the bent leaves appeared.
Roger, what your saying makes alot of sense. I'm probably going to call the water company again when i get the chance. when i test my gh with AP testkit, i get around 4-5 degrees. what would that be in PPM?
thanks again for every ones help

30gallon tank, 3.2 watts/g, eheim filter with co2


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## jolywoo (Mar 23, 2004)

wetman, actually i live in newark right now so i'm not sure if we still have the same water source. Do you know if your calcium is higher than magnesium? if so, do you have the same problems i have?

30gallon tank, 3.2 watts/g, eheim filter with co2


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## wetmanNY (Feb 1, 2003)

With a GH around 14ppm and less than a degree of alkalinity, I find I can so easily induce the symptoms of calcium deficiency by dosing with potassium chloride that I dose the make-up water instead. Every couple of weeks I put perhaps a quarter of a teaspoon of KCl to ten gallons directly in my tanks.

But I'm not running CO2, my lighting is moderate, I grow easy plants like Java Fern and Anubias, etc. and I'm looking for modest growth with not too much algae and easy upkeep. It's a low-stakes game....

I did a search at www.google.com for the story on Nutley's water. Surf your watershed, as the E.P.A. suggests! We should all be well up on the origins, treatment and characteristics of our water.


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## Roger Miller (Jun 19, 2004)

4-5 dGH would be 71-89 ppm. That's much higher than the water utility quoted. The numbers aren't holding together very well.

Roger Miller


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## Roger Miller (Jun 19, 2004)

Mystery solved, I think.

The City of Newark provides a very good consumer confidence report for 2001 at

http://www.sanv.homestead.com/files/ccr_2001.pdf

This looks like the source for the information that the utility quoted to you, except that magnesium is 3.2 ppm, *not* 32 ppm.

That difference means that all the numbers work out correctly; 12.8 ppm Ca and 3.2 ppm Mg give a total hardness of about 45 ppm, which is reasonably close to the 47.6 ppm hardness value that the utility quoted.

Your result from the AP test kit isn't consistent, but inconsistent results from an AP kit don't surprise me very much any more. It should be reading about 3 dGH.

You should not have a problem with the Ca:Mg ratio. 12.8 ppm Ca is pretty low, but probably not low enough to cause deficiencies unless something else is interfering with its uptake. As WetmanNY and others suggest, the fairly high potassium levels that you built up may be at the root of the problem.

Roger Miller

[This message was edited by Roger Miller on Wed April 16 2003 at 06:52 AM.]


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## imported_Svennovitch (Feb 1, 2003)

The last couple of weeks I have read the posts about calcium deficiency, and the competition between K, Ca en Mg for uptake with a lot of interest. Sometimes i am having these problems too.

But I wanted to add another issue: what about all the SO4 that is added with the potassium and/or epsom salt? That should have really been building up, or am i wrong? With lowering the amount of potassium, aren't you in for K-deficiency? Maybe adding K by dosing KCl or KNO3 (or a mixture of the three?).

Just a thought...
Sven


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## Roger Miller (Jun 19, 2004)

Sven,

Plants don't use very much sulfate, so it will build up to the level where it is limited by water changes. I don't know of any problems that have been reported from excess of sulfate. Just the same I think it's a good idea to dose nutrients with chemicals that use a mixture of different anions, e.g. sulfate, chloride. nitrate, bicarbonate. That way the water composition can stay in a more-or-less natural balance.

Potassium levels can drop to 5 ppm or maybe less without deficiency problems. The actual minimum would vary from plant to plant and probably depend on the substrate and a few other things.

Some of the high potassium levels that people on this board try to maintain are absolutely not required by plants. At least one report suggests that high levels may be beneficial in some way, but they aren't required.

Anyone who is interested in maintaining 20 ppm or more of potassium -- especially in soft water -- should probably spring for one of those expensive potassium test kits. Some normal dosing methods can let potassium reach much higher levels then you might anticipate.


Roger Miller


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## jolywoo (Mar 23, 2004)

I was searching all over the internet for my water report and you found exactly what i was looking for. I think its the source since my other values match as well like ph and nitrates. that decimal point really makes a diff.
i'm going to try bringing the k down again. for the past 3 months i was adding about 30ppm which includes k from kno3.
thanks Roger for clearing this whole mess up

30gallon tank, 3.2 watts/g, eheim filter with co2


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## wetmanNY (Feb 1, 2003)

Thank you Roger Miller! Agatha Chrystie herself couldn't have written a better last chapter denouement.

Did you get that Newark NJ water site through www.google.com ? What's your googling search technique? It's better than mine. The E.P.A. switched their "Surf Your Watershed" pages and I'm not getting the information I used to be able to call up...


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## Roger Miller (Jun 19, 2004)

Gee, thanks wetmanNY!

I did google it, but I wasn't able to find the report directly that way. I used google to find the City of Newark website then followed links to the water utility. From there I followed a link that was simply labeled "ccr."

I guess everyone is just supposed to know that "ccr" stands for Consumer Confidence Report and that the ccr reports are usually how water utilities distribute water quality information.

The Newark CCR goes well beyond the required minimum. It is an excellent report on the water system. For things other than the "ccr" link, they should be commended. The site also provides some narrative descriptions of the water system that some might find interesting.


Roger Miller


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