Importance of Adding Calcium Carbonate
1. What is Calcium Carbonate?
Calcium Carbonate is a compound of calcium and carbonate that corals produce to form their skeletal structure. In the aquarium hobby we normally look at these two chemicals in the aspect of calcium levels and alkalinity levels. Alkalinity is a reflection of the levels of carbonates in the water but can be explained as thus. Alkalinity is the measure of how much acid it would take to remove the carbonate from the water column.
2. Why should I use it in my reef aquarium?
Stony based corals use both Calcium and carbonate (Alkalinity) to build there stony structure. In a enclosed environment such as the reef aquarium the levels of both calcium and alkalinity quickly become to low for the coral to precipitate the calcium into there skeletal structure. By dosing Calcium carbonate you are able to add both the beneficial calcium and alkalinity elements into the water in there natural found formulation.
3. Which Additives to use.
Most aquarists use a widely available two part system to add calcium and carbonate to there reef aquarium. Most of these two parts use salt compounds such as calcium chloride, sodium carbonate, sodium bicarbonate, borate salts. The downside to using this system is it requires constant testing of the aquarium water to properly balance the aquarium to ideal levels.
Calcium reactors are also a common way of adding calcium carbonate to the aquarium and work well. However they are very costly and require regular maintenance.
Another type of aquarium additive is the Ideal all natural one step calcium carbonate buffer. One step additives normally use natural means of adding both calcium and carbonate to the aquarium water. For instance Calcium Carbonator uses three naturally mined minerals that contain calcium carbonate and contain high concentrations of the proper trace elements for coral growth. Additionally magnesium is added as a calcium stabilizer. This usage of a one part additive has conclusively given better results then calcium reactors or any other means of dosing trace elements to the aquarium. The results speak for themselves.
For more information on calcium carbonate please check out these sites
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-04/rhf/feature/index.php