jbb Posted March 25, 2012 Share Posted March 25, 2012 Did a few parameter tests after about 2 weeks of automated dosing 5ml every 3days of ESV B-Ionic 2 part, and had these results : cal - 420 (hanna checker) alk - 7.6 (hanna checker) P04- 0.01 (hanna checker) Mag - ~1460 (salifert) SG - 1.026 Salt is Aquavitro Salinity 5g WC's every sunday The tank is 8g with 20 long sump/fuge, and AI Nano and is SPS dominant but all are small frags. My concern is that my alk may be a bit low, what do you guys have as a target range or what have you found to work best ? I am new to the SPS world and there are SO many conflicting threads that my head is spinning. Any help would be awsome. Thanks in advance Link to comment
najluni15 Posted March 25, 2012 Share Posted March 25, 2012 You might want to raise it, but stability is the most important thing. If everuthing looks healthy and is growing well, then continue doing whatever it is your doing. If you want to maybe increase growth rates you can supplement to increase alk and CA a little, but not much. You need to make sure that it is balanced, but again stability is your best friend Link to comment
jbb Posted March 25, 2012 Author Share Posted March 25, 2012 Everything looks good for the most part. My issue is my blue torts, they are receeding from the base, it is super slow and only started when I lowered my lighting intensity to acclimate some new frags. I have started raisng my lights again but it seems that the popular alk # is around 9 so I want to make sure that with me being at 7.6 that im not harming anything. Link to comment
slasher Posted March 25, 2012 Share Posted March 25, 2012 I do similar water changes on about the same size set up and get good results without dosing at all. Stability says it all. If you don't dose you don't have to test for it. Simplicity is the goal. If everything looks healthy and is doing good then you have done your job. Link to comment
mrbigshot Posted March 25, 2012 Share Posted March 25, 2012 i shoot for 10 -11 dkh with my tank. anything over 7 dkh is fine (higher alk does help growth at times but it comes at a price of increased chance of tip burning) . your staying above 7 so i wouldnt worry, you could always dose some baked baking soda or soda ash to boost your alk levels if you want. at 7.6 dkh i would raise it but that's me. Link to comment
Rehype Posted March 25, 2012 Share Posted March 25, 2012 I keep my tank at 7 as well. With your phosphates so low its important to keep you alk in the 7-8 range or risk tip burning. 7-8 is fine as thats average alk of natural seawater.. Link to comment
altolamprologus Posted March 25, 2012 Share Posted March 25, 2012 Natural seawater has an alk of 7-8 dkh, so you're perfectly in line with natural conditions. I've never seen any conclusive studies that higher alk helps faster growth, so the only real benefit I see of keeping alk higher is so that if you skip a day of dosing you don't fall into the danger zone. I would also like to point out there is a pretty positive correlation between high alk (11-12 dkh) with low nutrients and the occurance of tissue degeneration in stony corals so you might want to keep that in mind I try to shoot for 9 dkh that way it's not too high, but I still have some room for alk to fall before it get dangerous. Link to comment
jbb Posted March 27, 2012 Author Share Posted March 27, 2012 Torts RTN'ed since this morning !!!! 100% GONE now im really stumped Link to comment
altolamprologus Posted March 27, 2012 Share Posted March 27, 2012 Torts RTN'ed since this morning !!!! 100% GONE now im really stumped That's weird because a guy called into my work saying his torts RTNed for no reason. His params were perfect, all other sps were healthy as could be and he'd been keeping sps for over 10 years so it wasn't some noob mistake. Seems like torts are on death's hitlist right now Link to comment
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