High alk issue + carbon dosing causing burnt tips

[Tinola]

Hey everyone, I have a 10 gallon tank and I need some help from you guys/gals before I receive my box of tropic marin pro reef. Right now, my alk is at about 10 dkh. My new salt is arriving on wednesday. I'm getting some burnt tips on my highlighter acro and ORA verde. My other SPS corals are not affected at all yet(hopefully won't be affected). Are there any suggestions on what I can do to prevent my two corals that're affected to not end up dying completely? I'm carbon dosing right now with vinegar at 4.8ml a day in a 10 gal tank on my second week.
I've noticed this only yesterday, so good thing I caught it pretty early!

Tank Stats

• Calcium: 420 ppm (Red Sea)
• Alkalinity: 11 dkh (API test kit)
• Mag: 1300 (Red Sea)
• Salinity: 1.023 (Will change to 1.025 once I receive my box of salt as I didn't know my LFS mixed their salt pretty low)
• Phosphate: 0.05ppm (Hanna Checker)

What I've done so far...

• lowered my vinegar dosing today to 2ml and will dose this much everyday so far.
• Lowered my lighting
• Less feeding as I started seeing bubble and hair algae (minor) in my tank this morning.

Thanks everyone!

 

[always reefin]

Salinity low, but I think you know that. What are nitrates? Alk a little high in my opinion. SPS like a little lower Alk 7.5-8

 

[always reefin]

Do you know what your new salt will test at for Alk?

 

[Tinola]

The new salt will test about 8.5 dkh at 35ppt.

Nitrates at .5-1 ppm using salifert.

 

[always reefin]

I think lowering your Alk slowly will help, with steady being the main goal. What temp and is it steady? I'm not familiar with the vinegar dosing someone else will have to help with that. Also, just curious about the lowering your light with burnt tips. What lights are you using and why did you lower them?

 

[Tinola]

I meant lowering the level of my lights. They're kessil a350's (overkill, i know)
Temp at 78 and pretty steady..

 

[always reefin]

I gottcha. Just wondering if lights can burn tips? Then you lower them? Just curious as to why you lowered

 

[Tinola]

I guess you didn't understand what I said. I turned down the levels of my light from 50% both white and blue(didn't cause any problems before carbon dosing) to about 25-30% each color.
My guess for the cause is that I upped my vinegar dose too fast and my alkalinity is way too high for carbon dosing.

 

[always reefin]

I thought you meant lowering height...lol

 

[Tinola]

No worries. I'm just hoping the corals affected are going to be fine.

 

[Aquaph8]

Stop dosing until you get things straitened out. IMO your dose is pretty high for your second week too.

 

[Aquaph8]

Read this for dosing. https://www.reef2reef.com/forums/ge...19-lets-talk-about-carbon-dosing-aquaph8.html

 

[Tinola]

Thanks aquaph8. I knew my alk was pretty high in the first place but I've read other reefers who are carbon dosing with high alk so I went ahead and started carbon dosing.

 

[Tinola]

Darn, I just lost an aussie highlighter acro due to RTN. I'm kinda stressed out about it, but gladly, the piece was $8, but I don't like killing stuff...
Tomorrow hopefully the UPS guy arrives to my place early so I can do a 10% wc to lower my alk.

 

[kracer1025]

Stop you carbon dosing all together till you can get your alk steady around 7.5 I had the same proble when carbon dosing early on. The corals will recover with time once you lower your alk.

 

[ritter6788]

When I was running GFO I had the same problem. My sps fried if my alk got over 9.5 dkh.

 

[Tinola]

I stopped carbon dosing altogether. should i remove gfo once i start carbon dosing again?

Thanks so much for the help!

 

[Aquaph8]

GFO is fine with it but in your case be very careful cause things change very fast in ten gallons of water.