Altering Mix Water Alk?

[MrObscura]

This might be a dumb question, but... I was using Rscp which ran way too high Alk, so I've been mixing what I had with blue bucket to lower it. But I'm out of rscp and have a bunch of blue bucket still, so I was wondering is there any reason you shouldn't bump the dkh of your mix water before adding it to your tank? 

 

I have some fluval Alk I got super cheap a while ago just to have on hand in case, so I'd like to use up the blue bucket before switching salts to one that better matches my target Alk. 

 

 

[Andreww]

RSCP usually runs about 12dkh give or take and the blue bucket closer to 8, I’m curious what your current level is since you were mixing both to lower the levels.

9...10?

If so, after the blue bucket is exhausted , which salt are you gonna use?

 

That will dictate your Alk in this transition.

Either bring it up now slightly or lower it , but go slow as you already know. 

 

It’s good practice to stick to a salt with a dKh you want for your tank.

 

That way , no matter if you do 5% or 50% water change in an emergency, given temp and salinity are the same, you won’t shock your system with an Alk spike or drop.

Spikes are much worse than drops.

 

Keep in mind nutrient levels in your tank as well when choosing an ALK number for your tank.

Having an imbalance there will almost always create issues if you keep SPS.

 

Hope that made sense.

 

 

[FISHnChix]

11 minutes ago, Andreww said:

t’s good practice to stick to a salt with a dKh you want for your tank.

Depends on what you are trying to accomplish with a wc. Say you are dosing 2 part to keep your alk and ca spot on then yes you want a salt that matches your tanks normal params. Now say you are doing weekly water changes in hopes of not only removing nutrients but to replenish your alk and ca levels you would want a salt that mixes higher than your normal tank params.. if not your tank would slowly start to drop in ca and alk .. well unless you do 100 percent w.c. lol...

 

 

Oh and to the op yes you can dose your w.c. water to what ever alk you want . Obviously you dont want to swing your tank more than 1 dhk per day .. 

[Andreww]

Assuming OP is dosing, weikel is correct in stating you want a salt matching your current KH.

But it sounds like you’re lowering that KH for a reason, otherwise you’d keep doing WC with RSCP which will replenish the KH consumed in between water changes if your coral load doesn’t consume much. Not the best way to go about it but people have done it for a long time now .

 

A 5% 12dkh water change on a 8.5..9dKh tank will not be a problem.

Let us know what your intentions are.

You wouldn’t want more than a 0.5 dkh swing either way.

 

[MrObscura]

Between weekly water changes and kalk my parameters are stable. I keep Alk between 8.5-9dkh. It's just where my tank naturally found itself after a while and I didn't want to bring it back up to coral pro levels, hence the mixing of salts. I probably do closer to 40% WC since I dont really measure and I dont have to worry about it if mix water and tank parameters match. 

 

After my blue bucket is gone I'll probably give fritz rpm a try since advertised parameters are right where I want to keep things. 

[FISHnChix]

3 minutes ago, MrObscura said:

Between weekly water changes and kalk my parameters are stable. I keep Alk between 8.5-9dkh. It's just where my tank natural found itself after a while and I didn't want to bring it back up to coral pro levels, hence the mixing of salts. 

 

After my blue bucket is gone I'll probably give fritz rpm a try since advertised parameters are right where I want to keep things. 

Perfect. Then yea bump up the red sea blue bucket alk to the 8.5 and your set..

[Clown79]

What does your blue bucket alone mix to?

Mine mixes to 8.9-9.3

[FISHnChix]

24 minutes ago, Clown79 said:

What does your blue bucket alone mix to?

Mine mixes to 8.9-9.3

I wish mine would be that high!!.. I never get over 7.5.  Heck they dont even claim that it is much higher than that...😁

[MrObscura]

Yea I wish mine mixed there too. It's in the high 7s.

[Clown79]

Ya mine always mixes between 8.8-9.3.

 

Then again when I used Reef Crystal I had very low numbers and others always had higher.