It had been smooth sailing so something had to test me to see if I was on my A-game right? I guess I had somehow shaken loose the acrylic tube from the bulkhead in my dosing container that contains my Alkalinity buffer. I dose 28 ml of Ca and Alk per night via my Jebao dosing pump spread out throughout the night to maintain my parameters. Today I noticed everything looked fine but all of a sudden my Torch Coral was looking much more retracted than usual. I tested my Alk and it had dropped from 11.3 dKH 2 days ago to 9.7 dKH today. I got to troubleshooting the Jebao and figured out that the acrylic tube in the dosing container had come loose (probably when I was refilling it) and so my dosing pump dosed 28 ml of Calcium but no Alk last night, which coupled with tank consumption resulted in a 1.6 dKH drop in alkalinity. That’s a pretty big swing and I think I’m fortunate that the only unhappy coral is my torch (for now...I hope), it’s also interesting that it was the first to show signs of distress. I guess I’ll use it as my visual indicator from now on and assume something is off in the tank if it looks unhappy. It looks like it can recover but it’s also looking a lot more “stringy” than usual. Thankfully everything is hooked back up properly and I added a small additional dose of buffer to raise the alkalinity back up a bit but not too much, given it’s already stressed. I hope nothing else starts to react poorly due to the swing. Has anyone else had their torch be the first coral to react to a parameter swing?
