chemestry

Since starting my tank I have always struggled to keep nitrate at a detectable level. I have been dosing Ammonium Bicarbonate 20,000mg/L at the rate of 20ML into 130 Gallons daily. I send in monthly icps and they always come back at not detectable. I do not notice any negative effects from this...

Hi all! Trying to figure out the silicon level, the ICP result is saying to use RODI. I have BRS RODI 5 stage and resin is not even 50% used. I started with redsea blue bucket but changed to tropic marine pro. No corals yet only fish, the tank has been set up since april. I am mixing my water...

I have a 40 gallon tank and my phosphate is currently 0.5 and I’m having trouble lowering it. I use rodi water so I know that’s not the problem. I heard poly filter lowers phosphate so I bought it but it doesn’t seem to do anything. I’m trying to get it lower than 0.1 so I can finally add corals...

I just started my 20 gallons reef tank in January and I recently got Seachem Reef Plus Conditioner. I have noticed whenever I add it to my water(one a week) my Duncan Coral shrivels up and basically becomes...nothing, My frogspawn stays the same and I noticed my BRA kind of balls up too. The...

Like the title says I upgrade my tank from a Red Sea max 250 to a Red Sea reefer 350. I used about 3/4 of the old tank water and the rest newly mixed. I swapped all the rocks pretty quick so no die offs and didn’t transfer my sand except for enough to just cover the new (washed) sand that was...

Salifert test result - 8.9 Hanna - 7.8 Which to trust?

Hello: My Triton ICP test (test link) is showing incredibly high amounts of Lithium, Potassium and Silicon (worth noting that I also did an "ICP-Analysis" test before this one within a week apart and without any water changes in between and that also showed high Lithium and Potassium) Triton...

Hi all! Today I did my firsts trace color elements test using Red Sea test kit. The results were the following, Iodine 0.06ppm Iron 0.05 ??? Potassium 413ppm First question, Is my tank within acceptable parameters? Second question, What unit does the iron test measures?

I wanted to write about this subject as I too started to dig into the world of chemistry and became determined to simplify the thousands of words and simple but yet complicated chemistry equations about Alkalinity. come to find out its not that complicated! So let's uncomplicated Alkalinity...

I've had my aquarium running for around three months now (since the beginning of April), and It's a 48"L x 30"W x 30"H or around 190 gallons. I recently just introduced my first batch of coral frags to the tank (mushroom, ricordea, leather, and GSP) and a green BTA alongside a maroon clownfish...

sorry for leaving last post unfinished, everythings seems fine but DKH. im looking foward to buy a clownfish to pair my only fish in 20gal. should i hold off? using reef pro salt 2.5-5 gallon water change per week ,calcium 460 ,KH 14.4 (i've test many times in one day) ,salinity 1.026 ,ph 8-8.3...

Everyone knows one of the keys to successful coral growth is stable Alk/Ca. My question is, what is the real definition of stable? Are we talking about a rock solid unwavering alk of 9.5? or is bouncing around from 9 to 9.5 back to 9.2 , etc. ok? Here's my trident results from the last few...

System Volume: 20 Gallons Alk: 8.8 Calc: 400 Mg: 1080-980 PH: 8.2 -Mg consumption of ~50ppm a day -Daily dosing 80ml of 460g/L solution -All other parameters stable. -Upping to 100mL/day Help!

Hi, Is it possible to mix your own Barium additive? I seem to have chronically low barium in my system. From what I understand, it’s because Fauna Marin Balling Light doesn’t add enough as it’s designed to be used with zeolite media that should add Barium to the system. I need to add more...

In the beginning of my issues i was struggling with high alk and high phosphates. Its been around a week and i have been doing daily 5-10% water changes to lower these with rodi water. I know nothing good in this hobby happens fast so ive been expecting this to take a few weeks to resolve but...

Hi! I recently noticed that my corals dont really grow and if they even do the growth would be minimal. I found out that my ph was low at 7.8 (had a high alk aswell) and i raised it to 8.2-8.3 but have seen minimal to no difference in anything. I do weekly 10% water changes and use RODI water...

I recently acquired a 7 year old 29 gal tank. So it's well established, and the readings are pretty consistent. Being an amateur at this, I know a few readings are outside of the desired parameters but I'm not sure if I should worry, or just increase water changes. Currently I do a 5 gal change...

Hi all, So my chemistry was going well after cycling new tank in December 2021. It was my first aquascape attempt, and was in the middle of the ugly stage so I was doing a clean. During the clean, I knocked the top rock off and it almost crushed my torch and conch snail. Because I didn’t...

Hey all I have a 240g 5 months old water parameters are all good. The only issue I am having is keeping my 8.0-8.4 ph, it usually drops daily to 7.89 and hovers there. I dose alk 4 times a day at 200ml total daily. I can’t keep it to stay at above an 8. Calcium I dose 75ml a day and it...

Hello fellow reefers, I recently started using the Hanna Nitrate HR and I think it is a huge improvement over the Low range checker. With this new checker I no longer dread testing Nitrate so me and my tank buddies are very happy with the purchase :) The problem is that I ended up with a $50...

Two weeks ago I made the worst mistake to date when it comes to my nano. I went to dose my iodine (Lugol's) and did 2 drops instead of one. Then I dose double the amount of trace elements. I had planned to do a 20% WC the following morning. It seemed to be too late. My zoas, green stars, lepto...

Is this safe? Looks like dirt or something only my second bottle ever

I’ve been struggling with keeping my phosphates under 1ppm and was wondering if I should try harder with doing water changes more frequently as in twice a week? Or should go to get a phosphate remover? Both my tanks have HOB equipment if that makes a difference with anything. I will post my...

As title says. I ordered Aiptasia X off of Amazon last week. It got delayed. It finally got delivered on June 30. Problem is, Amazon never sent me a notification of delivery. And since I don't drive down the street to get my mail from the mailbox every day, I of course did not get it until I...

Hey I'm new in the Tampa area and I'm trying to find a good LFS, I'm trying to get ro water and the store I've been going to around here has been terrible. The water I got there smelled like rotten eggs and I picked up some emerald crabs and they died shortly after I got them. So if you know any...