Calcium dropping

[bryantkalagian]

Hopefully someone here has some ideas; I'm pretty much stumped. I have a 25 gallon tank with some lps and softies. Over the past month or so, some of the lps (hammer, dunkan and a torch to name a few) haven't been looking as happy as normal. Not opening up fully, losing a little bit of color etc. I've been constantly battling with my dosing. I'm currently dosing B-Ionic at what I think is a pretty healthy dose (40ml per day). I just bought a new Red Sea test kit and double checked my results. Calcium is at 250, dkh is 11.4 and magnesium is at 1400. I mixed up some fresh salt water with Red Sea Pro salt and tested it. All the levels were as advertised. I dose equal parts of the B-ionic, which to my understanding, is what you want to do. Any ideas how to raise calcium or why it's depleting so quickly?

[ReefWeeds]

Your alk and mag seem high which may be throwing off levels. I would do a large water change to get everything balanced back out and then test every couple days to check the stability of the three.

[bryantkalagian]

Your alk and mag seem high which may be throwing off levels. I would do a large water change to get everything balanced back out and then test every couple days to check the stability of the three.

I did that a couple weeks ago and over the last week and a half I got to the point I am now.

[Clown79]

If the newly mixed water parameters are good, doing a good size water change should balance things out and then dosing should maintain that.

 

Are you giving time in between dosing alk and ca? Some suggest 10 mins to an hr between dosing.

 

Your alk is on the higher side and ca being 250 seems very odd. Is the test kit old? Can you get the ca tested with another kit at the lfs?

 

To determine what your corals are using daily you would need to:

 

Test after water change

Test everyday after to see how much the corals are uptaking.

 

Do you have a lot of coralline?