ALK

[hexcolor reef]

It’s impossible to keep ALK at 9. I find myself always on the higher end 11-12 / 180-198

 

[therootcause]

I'm curious to know what salt you are using and how you are measuring salinity and alkalinity.

 

[bushdoc]

More info needed, what salt mixture U use, do you dose Ca/ alk, what corals U have?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I assume you never add any alk to the tank?

If you want alk lower, you can always use a lower alk salt mix, or lower it in the one you are using.

 

[hexcolor reef]

I never added ALK and I use Red Sea Coral salt which is 12dkh. I may be switching to Fritz’s reef salt. But may have issues dosing micro nutrients not having test kits for those.
I use a lot of Red Sea products. Red Sea also have another salt but mag and calcium are much lower but I may have to deal with that over higher ALK levels

 

[bushdoc]

Generally it’s recommended to use salt mixture with parameters close to those you want to keep. If you would like to keep your dKH around 9, I would recommend to use salt mixture closest to that. It is generally easier to use salt with slightly lower alkalinity and then supplement it , than use salt with higher alkalinity and lower it or wait for corals to consume it.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I never added ALK and I use Red Sea Coral salt which is 12dkh. I may be switching to Fritz’s reef salt. But may have issues dosing micro nutrients not having test kits for those.
I use a lot of Red Sea products. Red Sea also have another salt but mag and calcium are much lower but I may have to deal with that over higher ALK levels

I'm not sure what you mean by micronutrients (that's not really a seawater/oceanography terminology) but I would not dose nutrients without either a measurement, or an indication from an organism that it was suffering and you had strong reason to believe a specific element was needed.

 

[hexcolor reef]

I'm not sure what you mean by micronutrients (that's not really a seawater/oceanography terminology) but I would not dose nutrients without either a measurement, or an indication from an organism that it was suffering and you had strong reason to believe a specific element was needed.

I meant to text trace elements.
As far as calcium and magnesium my corals absorb a lot so I didn’t want to switch sea salt

 

[hexcolor reef]

Just picked up Red Sea salt with lower 8kh
Should be better for my all reef system