So about a month ago I set up a frag tank. Bought Australian branching live rock and put it in the tank, added a couple small pieces of Marco rocks and empty frag racks with some coral tiles (no corals, just aragocrete tiles). So it's fairly empty in the tank. Added some clowns and left lights off for a few weeks. Giving clowns some mysis and also added a couple Jars of pods and an ounce of live phyto. Also a few astrea snails and a hermit.
Last week i finally got my Apex on the tank set up and set up the Trident. Was surprised to find my alk was around 9.5... seeing as how I use Nyos salt and the salt mix fresh is about 7.7-8 dKH. Confirmed with a hanna that yes... alk was accurate and about 9.5. Since then my alk has continued to rise... and is currently 9.9...
What's causing the rise in alk? The only think i can think of is some of the aussie live rock i got is adding alk... it looks like large pieces of coral skelton more than rock since it's branching...
Calcium has been floating around 350 the entire time and Magnesium around 1350... Nitrate is 13.5 and phos is 0.16. pH is pretty consistently at 7.9/8 (but i haven't calibrated the apex probe yet and tank is in basement). I just turned on skimmer to start breaking it in.
Want to start getting paramaters set and ramping up lights to add coral frags but not until alk seems more stable. I plan to do a water change to bring it back down... just not sure how it got to almost 10 to begin with.
Last week i finally got my Apex on the tank set up and set up the Trident. Was surprised to find my alk was around 9.5... seeing as how I use Nyos salt and the salt mix fresh is about 7.7-8 dKH. Confirmed with a hanna that yes... alk was accurate and about 9.5. Since then my alk has continued to rise... and is currently 9.9...
What's causing the rise in alk? The only think i can think of is some of the aussie live rock i got is adding alk... it looks like large pieces of coral skelton more than rock since it's branching...
Calcium has been floating around 350 the entire time and Magnesium around 1350... Nitrate is 13.5 and phos is 0.16. pH is pretty consistently at 7.9/8 (but i haven't calibrated the apex probe yet and tank is in basement). I just turned on skimmer to start breaking it in.
Want to start getting paramaters set and ramping up lights to add coral frags but not until alk seems more stable. I plan to do a water change to bring it back down... just not sure how it got to almost 10 to begin with.
