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Cultivated Reef

Something is very wrong with my alkalinity..


OCNcheffy

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Some quick backstory.. I have a 16 gallon IM Nuvo tank and I've recently started two-part dosing with B-Ionic to help supliment my nano reef with alk and calcium due to my higher SPS load. Last week, I was in a great range of the following parameters:

Alk- 8.0dkh
Mag - 1400
Cal - 400
PH - 8.4
I was dosing 3ml a day of each suppliment to maintain these parameters. Sunday I skipped dosing due to a water change of 2 gallons as I knew it would add to my parameters strictly from the water change. Monday I test and I get the following:

Alk - 5.0
Mag - 1380
Cal - 420
PH - 8.4
Since Monday, i've been trying to raise my alkalinity with b-ionic part 1 or Soda ash, and I can't get it higher than 5.4 for the life of me! What's going on? Everything's been great up until the water change. Adding the recommended dosage using calculators to raise my alk up 1 DKH value seems to have little to no effect. The next day it goes right back down to 5.0 or less according to my red sea alk test.

Any suggestions?
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Just brain-storming here, I am pretty much a noob so take what I say with a grain of salt. If it were my tank I would say first make sure your doser is working correctly, maybe something happened to it during your last water change. Assuming you didn't change salt in that water change I would also make sure that all of your tests are good and accurate. I would think you would lose some ca if your tank was really using up that much alk. Perhaps the alk being added precipitates before it really dissolve well into your tank. Also I hope other will chime in but that could just be the amount of alk your tank uses. Maybe something in your tank is growing like crazy. Again though, I am a total noob so just my two cents. This is definitely a head-scratcher to me and I look forward to learning what the issue was.

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Just brain-storming here, I am pretty much a noob so take what I say with a grain of salt. If it were my tank I would say first make sure your doser is working correctly, maybe something happened to it during your last water change. Assuming you didn't change salt in that water change I would also make sure that all of your tests are good and accurate. I would think you would lose some ca if your tank was really using up that much alk. Perhaps the alk being added precipitates before it really dissolve well into your tank. Also I hope other will chime in but that could just be the amount of alk your tank uses. Maybe something in your tank is growing like crazy. Again though, I am a total noob so just my two cents. This is definitely a head-scratcher to me and I look forward to learning what the issue was.

I've always been able to raise my tank to my target akalinity range for at least a day with soda ash or some other suppliment, and right now it seems to have almost no effect. My first thought was maybe my small water volume is just not holding all the alk my sps need to grow, but then I'd also see calcium drop if the corals were growing. That's staying stable. Going to test my water at the LFS today and i'm also gonna do a 5g water change.

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Sounds like a test kit issue, do you have a backup? I literally always have two Salifert Alk tests on hand, right now I have 3. :)

 

Do you have any big Alk users in the tank? You mention SPS and if they are happy that can use a crap ton of Alk a day. The most stressful time for an SPS tank is when the corals start growing and you have to keep chasing Alk until you find the balance. Adding Alk to a healthy tank can increase growth requiring even more dosing to stay caught up.

 

Do NOT over dose, do not dose too much as once, make sure test kits are accurate, and always dose equal amounts both parts in different areas of the tank or at least 10 minutes apart. Test Alk only, try and get it up to 6.5 minimum then see if you can calculate usage. Do not go over 7.5 right now IMO, since I don't know your nutrient levels and such. If some of your SPS are acros and growing fast higher Alk can cause tip burn if nutrients are low. Staying between 6.5 and 7.5 seems to be the safest range, with 7 being ideal.

 

I can't stress the balanced approach enough since I've seen so many people get params out of wack and end up chasing both until the tank is harmed. Alk is the most important and as long as you are dosing equal parts 2 part calcium will balance out.

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Sounds like a test kit issue, do you have a backup? I literally always have two Salifert Alk tests on hand, right now I have 3. :)

 

You are using a balanced two part so always dose equal parts both parts, remember a drop of Alk by 2KH is only a small drop in calcium but it's still important to keep the balance when dosing.

 

Do you have any big Alk users in the tank?

I don't have a backup, but I'm going to the LFS today to have it tested to know for sure if it's a bad kit. I have roughly 12 pieces of acropora and 2 smaller monticaps and the rest in the tank are lps/zoas.

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Crisis averted! My alk is currently at 8.4dkh and my red sea kit is actually get a worse accurate reading now. We tested with a Salifert kit and got a much better reading. I used the Salifert check solution to see how badly the Red Sea is reporting, and I don't even show up on the chart and it turns red. Using 2ml of titration before turning red.

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Agree with multiple kits. I use Salifert for the big three, but also have two Hanna checkers, dKH and phosphate. If I get a weird reading with the Salifert alk, then I verify with the Hanna or vice versa. Now that I have the GHL Doser 2, everything is spot on, no matter what time I check. With a tank full if sps, redundancy is key. Glad it worked out and you didn't start to chase numbers.

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