4.5 dKH Panic

[-Logzor]

I test my dKH fairly often, every 5-7 days. Since it's such a critical parameter, I have to ensure it doesn't get too high or too low. Usually this isn't a problem, my dosing pumps do all the work. Typically I just increase the dosing every month or so as my corals get larger and demand increases. Every so often something goes astray, either the tube intake for my 2-part somehow goes above the water line in my 5-gallon dosing buckets, my solution runs out, or my litermeter pump slows to a crawl because it needs oiled (they are 6+ years old).

Lately growth has been exploding in my reef and demand for alkalinity has gone up tremendously, coupled with that my intake for 2-part came up out of the water, and my dosing pump slowed way down. Somewhere between Sunday and Thursday this occurred. I tested on Sunday and I was right around 8 dKH. I tested again on Thursday and I'm down to 4.5 dKH. This parameter has never goes this far low! I was shocked so I decided to double-checked with another test kit, sure enough!

I couldn't believe it because everything looked happy and normal.

I figured the time period where I had sub 7 dKH was fairly short, so I dosed about 270mL of solution into my 150g reef and brought everything right back up to 8 dKH within a couple hours. Everything is still doing perfectly fine! Everything from big colonies to small frags didn't have the slightest issue.

Every time something like this happens I figure out a way to ensure it never happens again, I should have fixed this problem before, since I knew it had previously occurred. The first step will be to glue the intake for my 2-part to the bottom of the bucket. The second will be to set reminders on my phone to oil my dosing pumps every 6 months.

I have three pumps setup to dose using Randy's two part (both the high-strength solution). Even if I miss one day of dosing it can throw my reef way off. Test your pumps and keep them maintained!

250mL - Alkalinity
220mL - Calcium
150mL - Limewater

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

When the alk was low, did the corals appear any different?

 

[-Logzor]

When the alk was low, did the corals appear any different?

I didn't notice anything different, I stare at my corals a lot, and I would've never guessed anything was wrong if i hadn't tested the water. My jaw hit the floor when I saw the results of the test, both on my Hanna meter and Salifert.

My guess is that the previous day the dosing stopped, considered I dose 250mL a day of alkalinity, and I had to dose about 260mL to get it back up to 8 dKH. I don't think the system had responded to the low level yet.

I'm sure if another day had passed things would have started to RTN.

 

[Battlecorals]

I test my dKH fairly often,
Every time something like this happens I figure out a way to ensure it never happens again,

best way would be to test daily without exception. Kind of a pain and you'll fly through alk kits but for me thats the only way to be sure alk is where its supposed to be. I buy three or four salifert alk kits at a time every couple months!

 

[-Logzor]

best way would be to test daily without exception. Kind of a pain and you'll fly through alk kits but for me thats the only way to be sure alk is where its supposed to be. I buy three or four salifert alk kits at a time every couple months!

Adam I couldn't agree with you more, I probably wont test daily at this point but I will definitely test a lot more often! If I had a huge system volume that had room for error it wouldn't be a big deal, but with my current system volume and two-part demand, one day goes awry and I'm in deep trouble. I think I dodged a bullet this time around.

Wish I had an alkalinity probe!

 

[ritter6788]

Wish I had an alkalinity probe!

^^^ Me too! I'm an alk over tester myself.

 

[Daniel@R2R]

OK. Thread cleaned up. Let's keep this on topic and civil.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I didn't notice anything different, I stare at my corals a lot, and I would've never guessed anything was wrong if i hadn't tested the water. My jaw hit the floor when I saw the results of the test, both on my Hanna meter and Salifert.

My guess is that the previous day the dosing stopped, considered I dose 250mL a day of alkalinity, and I had to dose about 260mL to get it back up to 8 dKH. I don't think the system had responded to the low level yet.

I'm sure if another day had passed things would have started to RTN.

Thanks.

Maybe you should experiment so we all know at what alk the RTN starts.

 

[-Logzor]

Thanks.

Maybe you should experiment so we all know at what alk the RTN starts.

No thanks!!

I am curious if other people have gone through similar circumstances and raised their dKH by 4 or more points in one day.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

My biggest concern with doing that is the pH rise that might come from it, depending on how you boost the alk.

Other than pH, or an impurity that comes with the alk additive, I can't really see there being a problem if you only bring it up to 7-8 dKH.

The problems folks seem to get come more from higher levels, even if the boost itself was smaller than yours, especially in ULNS tanks (for reasons that have never been adequately explained).

 

[TruRacr314x]

Glad you caught it before it started to effect your stuff negatively! It is a bit scary to know that our tanks relay so heavily on dosing that one or two days can have such drastic consequences!

 

[-Logzor]

Glad you caught it before it started to effect your stuff negatively! It is a bit scary to know that our tanks relay so heavily on dosing that one or two days can have such drastic consequences!

Yeah that's that bad thing about a "small" tank with a huge amount of demand. It's literally on chemical life support 24/7.

 

[hart24601]

My biocube 14 that is all SPS once dropped below 3dkh and lower than 100ppm calcium before I got dosing pumps. I noticed a little less PE, but everything looked fine other than that. I boosted it back up all at once... Well I did a WC around 60%, numbers were still low so added baking soda and calcium later that night. No problems at all.

It doesn't have the hardest sps to keep, staghorn acros, birdsnests, cat paws and montis, but they were all just fine.

 

[DFW]

Yeah that's that bad thing about a "small" tank with a huge amount of demand. It's literally on chemical life support 24/7.

Is your tank still doing ok?

 

[-Logzor]

Is your tank still doing ok?

So far so good! To be honest, I didn't even notice anything wrong at all during the entire ordeal.

 

[DFW]

So far so good! To be honest, I didn't even notice anything wrong at all during the entire ordeal.

That's really good to hear!

 

[-Logzor]

So far so good! To be honest, I didn't even notice anything wrong at all during the entire ordeal.

It was a huge relief that nothing bad happened. Thanks for checking in! I'm checking my alkalinity a lot more often now.

I also fixed my buckets. I epoxied my intake tubes for my two-part onto the bottom of the buckets. This way they always pull from the bottom and won't pop-up out of the solution. This has happened before where my bucket is nearly full but the end of the tube floats above the surface of the solution!

 

[DFW]

It was a huge relief that nothing bad happened. Thanks for checking in! I'm checking my alkalinity a lot more often now.

I also fixed my buckets. I epoxied my intake tubes for my two-part onto the bottom of the buckets. This way they always pull from the bottom and won't pop-up out of the solution. This has happened before where my bucket is nearly full but the end of the tube floats above the surface of the solution!

Thanks for sharing!