Help! Purple up Dropped my PH!!

[Cy_Borg_Monk]

hello all, I'm new to this site so please be easy on me lol. I've been in the hobby for about 8 years now. I recently started my 10gallon Nano tank (3 months ago) its doing average I would say. the corals are growing, not fast but pretty well. I don't have much coralline algae growing so I wanted to try purple up. well I did that last night with a ph of about 8.14 and I woke up to a ton of notifications from my APEX saying it was 6.0!! I'm planning on doing a water change immediately but curious to why it dropped so much. I have a 10 gallon sump/refugium too so my water volume is around 18 gallons with all my live rock and sand.

[A.m.P]

Alk swing maybe? Could be dieoff since that product also contains live bacteria IIRC. Waterchange should probably be enough, super-weird though, hope everything isn't too upset, maybe someone with a bit more experience will be able to give you a better idea of what happened.

[Cy_Borg_Monk]

Thanks Amphrites. No, every little bit of information helps. Thank you. I'm throwing that stuff away. everything was fine for months until I tried it.

[Tamberav]

1 hour ago, Cy_Borg_Monk said:

hello all, I'm new to this site so please be easy on me lol. I've been in the hobby for about 8 years now. I recently started my 10gallon Nano tank (3 months ago) its doing average I would say. the corals are growing, not fast but pretty well. I don't have much coralline algae growing so I wanted to try purple up. well I did that last night with a ph of about 8.14 and I woke up to a ton of notifications from my APEX saying it was 6.0!! I'm planning on doing a water change immediately but curious to why it dropped so much. I have a 10 gallon sump/refugium too so my water volume is around 18 gallons with all my live rock and sand.

 

Purple up:

• Raises calcium, iodine and other trace elements essential in reef aquariums

 

You are basically dosing calcium, probably throwing your alk out of wack. This could lead to precipitation too. Don't use products like purple up. Not many shortcuts worth a damn in this hobby.

 

 

[Clown79]

Purple up is not often recommended because adding things you can't test for or products that can alter parameters can effect other parameters. It adds mag, cal, iodine, that may have altered your alk. 

 

 

Best to let coralline develop naturally.

 

It may have caused a drop in alk which can effect ph. 

 

Have you tested mag, alk, ca?

[Cy_Borg_Monk]

Clown79, I haven't tested my Parameters today yet. that's exactly what I'm going to when I get home from work first. before I do a water change. I want to see exactly what it did to my tank. I shouldn't have tried to boost anything. you know as well as I do this hobby is a slow but steady process. Thank again for the input

[Tamberav]

By the way, coralline algae will grow eventually on its own without any intervention as long as the tank is stable. It just takes time for it to really take off. Usually 6-months-year for me. 

[seabass]

My guess is that your magnesium was a bit low.  Adding calcium, with low magnesium, can push alkalinity out of suspension (over dosing calcium can also cause this).  This swing was bad for coralline, as well as your corals.

 

Think of magnesium as a bucket, and calcium and alkalinity as quantities of water.  If the magnesium bucket is too small, it won't hold all of both elements.  Adding one will displace some of the other (the same happens if you add too much of one).  However, if the magnesium bucket were larger, typical levels of both elements can be held.

 

Dosing Purple Up probably would have been fine if magnesium was higher.  Although, like the others have stated, it's not a miracle solution.  It can be used in conjunction with testing, although other two part dosing solutions are probably better.

 

Elevated parameters can be more difficult to manage.  Stability and good parameters will probably help the most with coralline.  Oh, and  to Nano-Reef.com.