Help...accidentally raised Alk 5 to 10 dkh in one dose! What to do?

[duganderson]

I accidentally miscalculated my baking soda dosing and raised my DKH approximately from 5 to 10. I know you're only supposed to raise it 1.4 dkh per day.

 

What should I do? Will things be OK. I don't think a water change would help because my salt (Reef Crystal) is at 10 dkh so a water change would not help with shock due to the change.

 

I have a tank with a clown, firefish, anemone, softies, gorgoians, a couple LPS and some macros in a 28 g. nano cube.

 

Thanks, Doug

[jservedio]

Don't do anything whatsoever. Just maintain your Alkalinity at 10 for the next couple of months or so and then if you want it to be lower for whatever reason, let it naturally, and slowly lower itself over the course of a few weeks. However, since you mentioned you are using reef crystals, I would keep it at 10 permanently unless you change salt.

 

Any further changes in Alkalinity are just going to make things far worse. A spike in one direction is half as bad as a spike in two directions

 

Also, 1.4 dkh in a single day is nuts - if I wanted to change my alkalinity, I would suggest 1.4 dkh over the course of a week. At least you don't have any acros or montis so the swing probably won't kill anything as long as it doesn't happen again.

[furam28]

Corals usually don't like such sudden changes, but the ones you have will do fine. SPS are the more finicky ones. And dkh at 10 is perfect. Try to maintain it at that. Also, if you have a test kit, measure your calcium levels. Sometimes sudden high alk can deplete calcium, so you may have to dose some.

[duganderson]

Everything seemed to handle this sudden increase.

[johnnyriker]

I agree with jservedio. Don't change the tank Alk twice in one day. It will only add more stress and shock to the inhabitants. As for baking soda save it for the fridge and baking cookies. I used to use baking soda myself in the past. It works but it's not very good on the water. There are dKH buffers out there that will bring your Alkalinity up and cost very little if you do the numbers. You can safely bring your Alkalinity up 1 a day with no issues except for very fussy SPS which you don't have at the present time. I've changed my tank up to 2 Alkalinity a day with mostly SPS and have no issues but try not to if I can as it's not healthy on them. I'm glad everything went ok with it though. That's what matters. Happy reefing!

 

johnny