Adding Caribsea Special Grade Aragonite to established SPS system question

[JAcropora]

System is SPS dominated bare bottom, nutrients locked in around .05 phosphate, with around 40 SPS mini colonies

Decided even though I have encrusting Monti on the glass bottom and a truck load or coraline, i would like some sand and wrasses

Will adding around a inch of Aragonite sand strip the tank of Po4? If so will it leach it back out eventually? Is it manageable with dosing Phosphate?

Should I just scrap the idea?

Thank you !

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I don't know how much phosphate comes on the aragonite, but even if bare, it is readily corrected by dosing phosphate for a fixed period of time.

 

[JAcropora]

I don't know how much phosphate comes on the aragonite, but even if bare, it is readily corrected by dosing phosphate for a fixed period of time.

Perfect, thank you

I went ahead and added the Aragonite Sand

I have noticed that my Alkalinity has dropped from 7.8dKh to around 6.5dKh in three days which took me by suprise

Would you say this is normal and the Aragonite is consuming Alkalinity?

 

[sc50964]

Following

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Perfect, thank you

I went ahead and added the Aragonite Sand

I have noticed that my Alkalinity has dropped from 7.8dKh to around 6.5dKh in three days which took me by suprise

Would you say this is normal and the Aragonite is consuming Alkalinity?

Fresh bare calcium carbonate can induce precipitation of more calcium carbonate. If itdoes not stop, you'll need to take some action, such as keeping the alk and pH low for a while.

 

[JAcropora]

Fresh bare calcium carbonate can induce precipitation of more calcium carbonate. If itdoes not stop, you'll need to take some action, such as keeping the alk and pH low for a while.

What type of timeline are we looking at here? It also dropped my Po4 by 0.02 (roughly) so have manually dosed it back up

No Biggie thus far, 1dkh alk swing over three days is absolutely no issue, i shall buffer back up with water changes to minimise trace element changes, excluding the drop in Po4, tbh tho both together aren't great but certainly not world ending

Mag and calc haven't budged as you'd expect