ALK Overdose! my experience.

Dowtish · Jun 10, 2013

Last weekend I was doing a WC on my tank, and I used my phone to turn off my return pump thru my APEX. Somehow I turned on my dosing pump for ALK and did not know it. I finished my WC and went on about my day. Later that evening I came home and saw that my ph was 8.6 and climbing. So I began to troubleshoot the problem and then realized what I had done. My ALK had climbed from 7.9 to 14 dkh! in about 7 hours. Default thought was do a WC immediately! But I had just used all my SW that morning. So I call a friend to go pick up some SW from him, and before I left I found a thread on here that said to NOT PANIC and do a large WC as it will just cause another swing. They suggested to just let it fall on it's own. I was preparing to do a 15-20 WC and opted to do a 5 gallon one instead. After the 5 gal WC I tested an hour later and my ALK was at 12, which is much safer than 14. At that point I turned OFF my dosing pump and preceded to test everyday for the 3 days. It was dropping steady at about 2 dkh a day. So by the 3rd day I switched my ALK pump back on as usual. This was 9 days ago. I have an SPS dominated tank with various montis, acros, birdsnest etc, and have not had a single issue. Not even a burnt tip. It's like nothing happened at all.

I do know that there is a difference with just 1.1ml dripping every minute over several hours as opposed to spiking the tank to 14DKH in a matter of minutes, but I am still blown away that there has been no sign of anything to any of my corals.

Just wanted to share this, and once again without R2R, I would have definitely over reacted and probably killed a few corals.

PS- I have now added alarms to APEX if my ph climbs above 8.35.

cdness · Jun 10, 2013

Been there before. No fast reactions to emergencies. You always should pause and let the issue soak in so you make sound decisions.

Glad to hear it's all OK!

Dowtish · Jun 10, 2013

cdness said:
Been there before. No fast reactions to emergencies. You always should pause and let the issue soak in so you make sound decisions.

Glad to hear it's all OK!

In this case, pause and research R2R. Somebody was bound to have done the same thing as me! LOL

ritter6788 · Jun 10, 2013

Mine got up to 13 once when I changed MH bulbs to a lower par bulb and didn't realize it until it was too late. Growth was slower so less alk was used up and I kept dosing the same amount. Lost most of my sps to alk burn.