Sangokai Sangokai Balance chem Ca-1

Product Description

Sangokai BALANCE chem Ca-1

chem Balance Ca-1 is a component of a reef care system. To operate it fully, you’ll need additional products. “You
can find more information and the system instructions here

Brief Description

Sango chem-balance Ca-1 doses calcium and maintains it at a natural level of 420–425 mg/L. At the same time, it stabilizes strontium, rubidium, and boron. Calcium is a component of limestone and thus an important building block of coral skeletons. Check your calcium level regularly and avoid letting it drop below 400 mg/L.

Product Description

How much calcium is dosed with sango chem-balance Ca-1?

Dosing calcium with sango chem-balance Ca-1 is very simple. All BALANCE products are concentrated stock solutions that must first be diluted with reverse osmosis water or Aquadest (distilled water) to the intended final working solution. We’ll show you how to do this in the BALANCE System instructions. Click the button below to go directly to the BALANCE instructions, which include many important tips and frequently asked questions.

Go to the Guide »Go to the BALANCE System Guide

The following dosage applies to the prepared working solution:

2.5 mL of sango chem-balance Ca-1 working solution per 100 L of total net volume increases the calcium content by 1 mg/L. Proportional to this calcium content, 19.4 µg/L of strontium, 0.29 µg/L of rubidium, and—proportional to the corresponding chloride input—0.4 µg/L of boron are also added. This corresponds to the natural distribution of calcium, strontium, rubidium, and boron in seawater.

To balance the chloride content in the reef aquarium—which is proportionally dosed via sango chem-balance Ca-1—against the other major elements sulfur (as sulfate), magnesium, potassium, bromine, fluorine, and iodine, the exact same amount of sango chem-balance Ca-2 must be dosed. This also maintains the respective availability of, for example, potassium and the halogens.

If this is not done, the chloride concentration in seawater increases, which consequently lowers the concentration of the other bulk elements relative to chloride and the rise in salinity. This condition is generally referred to as an ion imbalance or “ion shift.” In particular, a lack of available potassium or boron can lead to growth and color problems, especially in sensitive SPS corals. This problem is prevented by the adjusted dosage of sango chem-balance Ca-2, whose composition is precisely tailored to the chloride dosage provided by sango chem-balance Ca-1. You can find more information on this in the product description for sango chem-balance Ca-2.

What does sango chem-balance Ca-1 do?

sango chem-balance Ca-1 is a concentrated, extremely high-purity, and therefore contaminant-free solution of calcium, strontium, rubidium, and boron designed to specifically increase calcium levels while maintaining the natural ratio to strontium, rubidium, and boron—as seawater constituents potentially relevant to the skeletal development of marine organisms.

Calcium, together with carbonate, is a component of limestone, the typical skeletal building material in tropical coral reefs. The chemical formula for limestone is calcium carbonate, CaCO₃. The formation of calcareous skeletons by corals—and, of course, by other invertebrates such as calcareous sponges, clams, snails, or calcareous tube worms, as well as by calcareous algae—leads to the consumption of calcium dissolved in the seawater in every reef aquarium.

The natural calcium level—and the target level for reef aquariums—is approximately 415–425 mg/L, at a salinity of 35 psu (psu = practical salinity unit; other units include g/kg or per mille, or in English, ppm = parts per million).

Different organisms employ vastly different biochemical mechanisms and strategies for depositing skeletal calcium. The exact processes are highly complex and, in some cases, are still only understood through biochemical models. Compared, for example, to calcareous algae such as Halimeda, corals possess an active calcium accumulation system; that is, they use an energy-intensive, enzyme-based mechanism to accumulate dissolved calcium from the water into their tissues. The enzymes involved (e.g., calcium ATPase) are evolutionarily very strictly adapted to the natural calcium concentration and function extremely poorly when deviations in the local calcium concentration occur—something that virtually never happens in the ocean. In reef aquariums, however, calcium deficiencies are commonplace, because the very limited water supply serves as only an extremely small reservoir for the consumable seawater constituents. We reef aquarists must replenish this reservoir as needed through practical measures—on a long-term basis and always in a way that suits the specific characteristics of our own individual tanks! This is because every tank has its own unique stocking structure—not only in terms of corals, but especially with regard to the other organisms mentioned above, such as calcareous sponges, calcareous tube worms, and snails, which contribute significantly to daily calcium consumption.

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