7.5, water change, 6.7dhk. Should I adjust?

[Tom Toro]

Great advice! I do run probiotics so I can feed more and avoid the nuisance algae. I hated starving my fish to keep algae down. They're a lot happier now.

I'll be sure to monitor closely and keep it well under 9. 8 is where I'd like to be in a perfect world, just having trouble getting there. Initially that's why I chose Oceanic salt since the alk was at 7 out of the bag. Never thought I'd be in the 5 range. I've heard RC is at 11 out of the bag so I'll have to do smaller water changes more frequently to avoid spikes.

Thanks,
Tom

If your running probiotics it is imperative that you keep your alk below 9dkh. I would recommend a quality kit such as Lamotte. At 9dkh many acro tips will burn. Get your alk around 8 and stable and calcium/magnesium will fall right into line. Then just keep it stable. Also if you use the carbon/bacteria to keep nutrients low but not at zero you run less risk of tip burn. I also used probiotics to allow myself to feed more as opposed to driving to ultra low nutrients. That will keep your corals growing, your colors rich, and your fish fat.

[Tom Toro]

O.k. it's taking forever at 66ml per day to get the alk up so I'm taking two days to put in enough to take it from 7.3 to 8.1 in two days according to the brs calculator. I added 30 ml of the dry bicarbonate to a gallon of r/o and am using the doser to dose it by wednesday. If it's at 8.1(or near there) and I understand what Don's telling me, I'm going to:
.

1.leave it for 24 hours without dosing anything
2.Test it after 24 hours
3. Use the alk calculator to find out how much I need to add to bring it back
4. That's the amount I dose daily to keep it at 8.1

Test regularly since I'll be hopefully using calcium too now that it's able.

Right?

Also same thing with the 240g. I already brought it up to where I want it in two days and am leaving it until tonight at 9pm, test to see how much it used and then that's my number to dose.

Am I Close or am I missing something?

[slapshot]

O.k. it's taking forever at 66ml per day to get the alk up so I'm taking two days to put in enough to take it from 7.3 to 8.1 in two days according to the brs calculator. I added 30 ml of the dry bicarbonate to a gallon of r/o and am using the doser to dose it by wednesday. If it's at 8.1(or near there) and I understand what Don's telling me, I'm going to:
.

1.leave it for 24 hours without dosing anything
2.Test it after 24 hours
3. Use the alk calculator to find out how much I need to add to bring it back
4. That's the amount I dose daily to keep it at 8.1

Test regularly since I'll be hopefully using calcium too now that it's able.

Right?

Also same thing with the 240g. I already brought it up to where I want it in two days and am leaving it until tonight at 9pm, test to see how much it used and then that's my number to dose.

Am I Close or am I missing something?

You are right on!!

[Tom Toro]

Thanks Don! I appreciate you breaking this down for me. I'm used to letting the salt mix do it's job on water changes and figured I didn't need to dose. Especially since I've had some Kalk disasters. But, things are really turning around in my sps tank. Since it hit over 7, my polyp extension is amazing. growth on my stag weed is budding from the cut ends (where it was dead). My algae problem is waning too (except bryopsis), especially the brown plating algae and turf. Now my urchins are putting coral parts on their backs instead of algae plates. Not sure what the alk has to do with algae, but it's killing it(reducing phosphates?). I think I need to read up on this. What a difference! I'm sure once I change salt to RC, I'll have to be very careful and do small water changes while monitoring.

The 240 hit it's alk mark and 24hrs later it used up .5 dkh. BRS says I should add 285ml of recipe 1 per day to keep it there. Seems like a lot to put in everyday, but here I go. Ca and mg are still way up. PH is down on both tanks to 7.7 (just calibrated each monitor). I'm assuming it's cause I'm using the bicarbonate instead of the soda ash.

Any ideas on how to raise it to at least 8 or should I leave it alone?

[slapshot]

I'm glad to here that Tom, at this point i would leave it alone. I bet the lower PH is due to your house being closed up and your co2 levels rising. Those levels are acceptable. If you wanted to raise it with some Kalk you can do that but I would wait until you have the dosing down and running perfectly.

[Tom Toro]

I'm glad to here that Tom, at this point i would leave it alone. I bet the lower PH is due to your house being closed up and your co2 levels rising. Those levels are acceptable. If you wanted to raise it with some Kalk you can do that but I would wait until you have the dosing down and running perfectly.

Sounds good, Don. Only thing I am doing is cooking my bicarbonate of soda into soda ash. That should help from what I've read or at least not lower it.

[Tom Toro]

Sounds good, Don. Only thing I am doing is cooking my bicarbonate of soda into soda ash. That should help from what I've read or at least not lower it.

In a 24hr period my sps 180g setup went from 8.0 to 6.7. The calculator says I should add 137ml of soda ash recipe (2 1/8 cups per gallon of water) per day.

I'm setting my doser to pour 7ml 24 times a day into my turbulent overflow section of my sump.

Can this be right to dose this much a day? Anybody else dose this much (ratio) in their tank a day? I tested twice yesterday and twice today to make sure.

I was dosing 66 ml per day and it was steadily rising. The reef calculator says to increase this to 137ml per day to keep it at 8.0. This doesn't make sense to me. Any help in understand this would be great.

[slapshot]

Well now you get to the next point. It depends on your mix. I use soda ash so I can make it strong and dose very little or weak and dose a lot or more often. It is up to you. If your levels are steady then you are fine. We can go through it tomorrow.

[Tom Toro]

O.k. Good luck teaching this old dog some chemistry. Really looking forward to seeing your great setup in person, Don. Thanks for all the help and we'll see you tomorrow.
Tom

Well now you get to the next point. It depends on your mix. I use soda ash so I can make it strong and dose very little or weak and dose a lot or more often. It is up to you. If your levels are steady then you are fine. We can go through it tomorrow.

[Tom Toro]

Well, we are up to 8.6dkh on the sps tank. Looks a lot cleaner in there and the sps are all budded out. Thanks for the help folks, especially Don (Slapshot) who walked me through this. I think I have a handle on this now.

I'm adding 80ml of Bionic alk part and it's keeping me steady at 8.3-8.6. I'll be changing over to the Randy's recipe soon so I need to do some 'ciferin' to figure out how much of that I'll need. I figured I'm using about one dkh of alk a day so the reef calculator will take care of that.

Now to figure out a good way to put this aragamax sugar size sand in there. I've got it soaking in a bucket and it looks like milk. Going to be a challenge.