alk turns to snow issue

[Susan Edwards]

As the title says, when I dos alk I get "snow" which I assume is precipitation. I dose alk and calcium 30 min apart. I moved the dosing lines to the chamber where the water enters sump for more flow than the return area. And same thing. This morning, I added a bit to the return area (at the time alk would dose-30 min before calcium). And got snow. So I added some to the display and got "snow".

Why is it doing this and what is wrong?

I played with my doser and found a timer option so set up the time to dose ea element 2 hrs apart ie: Alk every 4 hrs starting 1am, and cal every 4 hrs starting at 3am.

Currently I'm dosing 52ml of alk over a 24 hr period and 19 of ca and 40 mg.

I just reset the doser to a timer--8 ml every 4 hrs

mg 1396
alk at 8.47
ca 443 (might be 100 ml higher as hanna tester was giving me higher readings than trident and trident is calibrated to salifret test). I will retest with hanna and decide whether to recalibrate trident

 

[Susan Edwards]

by snow I mean chunks of "stuff" not the normal alk cloud

 

[mindme]

What is your magnesium at? It will make a difference in what level you start to get precipitation.

Edit: Nevermind I'm blind. I see it now. Doesn't look extremely low, but might try raising it a tad.

 

[Susan Edwards]

What is your magnesium at? It will make a difference in what level you start to get precipitation.

Edit: Nevermind I'm blind. I see it now. Doesn't look extremely low, but might try raising it a tad.

I'm dosing 40 ml and it keeps dropping. It doses at the 20 minute mark over 24 hrs. Will change it to the 30 min mark now that I've changed the alk and ca times and raise it up a bit

I'm thinking maybe this is why my alk keeps dropping--the snow effect

 

[mindme]

I'm dosing 40 ml and it keeps dropping. It doses at the 20 minute mark over 24 hrs. Will change it to the 30 min mark now that I've changed the alk and ca times and raise it up a bit

I'm thinking maybe this is why my alk keeps dropping--the snow effect

When I had this happen it was because the reagents on my hanna alk testers went bad. It was telling me I had an alk below 8. So I kept adding and adding, and everytime it would add I would get precipitation. My corals started to look worse, I thought it was due to aluminum on my ICP tests. Did water changes, but didn't really seem to be helping.

During this process I ran out of reagent, so had to buy some more. When I tested on the new reagent, my alk was actually up above 13. Which explained why it was precipitating and why my corals weren't happy. I quit dosing and let the levels come back down, and everything started acting normal again.

So I would maybe double check the tests, because I think most likely you have more of calcium or alk than you think.

 

[Susan Edwards]

it would be calcium. I just tested the alk with hanna and it was close to trident but the ca was way higher. I'll retest with the hanna cal and maybe lower calcium amts.