Alkalinity, calcium and magnesium out of balance

[crazyfishmom]

Thanks

If you mean the the API multi test as in the AquaSpin tester, that's the same as what mine used, it showed my tank had 0.1ppm ammonia despite it being a year old. I did recently lose a large turbo snail, which in a 20 gallon could add a lot of nutrients but I am unsure if that'll cause ammonia, since a year old tank with lots of rock and filtration should process that

I agree that sounds unlikely. I have lost a lot more in a 20 gallon that is younger than that and there was no ammonia to be found.

Anything that uses the API chemistries is suspect in my book.

 

[Brad Coughlan]

I agree that sounds unlikely. I have lost a lot more in a 20 gallon that is younger than that and there was no ammonia to be found.

Anything that uses the API chemistries is suspect in my book.

Yeah

Only reason why I'd like to think that the API aquaspin is accurate is because of the cost of it

 

[Garf]

showed my tank had 0.1ppm ammonia despite it being a year old

Totally normal for a little to show up, not just on API either. When converting it to NH3, the reading is miniscule.

 

[Seansea]

Low magnesium will definatly cause your euphelia to suffer. I do not recommend not testing. I stopped testing and my mag got to 1130 and my euphelia sucked all the way back to the skull. Thought i was gonna lose em. Dosed back to 1400 over a week and they rebounded very nicely. I get mag consumption in my tank and can only attribute it to my ats. The loss correlates to the growth in my scrubber.

The salifert test kit is very accurate. I test it against icp every couple months and its spot on. Dont go by directions stating when color turns grey or blue. Wait til it turns blue every time and that measurement will be spot on.

 

[Brad Coughlan]

Low magnesium will definatly cause your euphelia to suffer. I do not recommend not testing. I stopped testing and my mag got to 1130 and my euphelia sucked all the way back to the skull. Thought i was gonna lose em. Dosed back to 1400 over a week and they rebounded very nicely. I get mag consumption in my tank and can only attribute it to my ats. The loss correlates to the growth in my scrubber.

The salifert test kit is very accurate. I test it against icp every couple months and its spot on. Dont go by directions stating when color turns grey or blue. Wait til it turns blue every time and that measurement will be spot on.

Thanks for the reply

I just made a small amount of fresh saltwater at 1.025 and tested the mag, came out with 1130ppm, should be 1250ppm... The tank tested at 1300+ppm

Could this just be human error

 

[Outlaw Corals]

Yeah I seen a few people say that it takes a lot of mag to raise it

That growth rate you had after sounds great, I'd love to have that as my growth rate isn't incredible. It's my first reef tank so I am still learning, but it seems like a lot of people have lots of LPS sucess with elevated mag, and I do have mostly LPS so I'm going to buy a suplement and do that

Which magnesium suplement did you use?

Thanks

I use the Brightwell magnesium

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Thanks for the reply

I just made a small amount of fresh saltwater at 1.025 and tested the mag, came out with 1130ppm, should be 1250ppm... The tank tested at 1300+ppm

Could this just be human error

Everything related to magnesium is error. lol

I have no idea where the errors all come from, but I don’t believe it is all from users not following directions to the best of their ability.

 

[Brad Coughlan]

Everything related to magnesium is error. lol

I have no idea where the errors all come from, but I don’t believe it is all from users not following directions to the best of their ability.

Lol,

I suppose a tiny drop of the titration solution could throw off the result by a long shot

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Lol,

I suppose a tiny drop of the titration solution could throw off the result by a long shot

FWIW, there are design aspects to magnesium testing that are not trivial.

One is that detecting magnesium in the presence of several ions that look very much like it (calcium, strontium) can be challenging.

Second is that the absolute concentration is quite high, making precision (the smallest change the kit can detect) with a reasonable amount of titrant difficult to attain.

If one is looking for color changes, how sharp the transition is, and how lighting impacts it may play a role.

How well any kit accomplishes these tasks will be at least part of the inherent variability, that is somewhat apart from human error.

 

[DJC]

It’s strange that calcium and magnesium would get so low without a similar decline in alkalinity. How frequently are you doing water changes? I know you mentioned switching recently but which salt mix were you using before? As you try to raise magnesium and calcium try to go slowly. A 200 ppm correction, if done quickly, will likely stress your corals so going slowly and doing it over the course of several days or maybe even a few weeks is important. If it were my tank I would really consider doing it through water changes rather than by dosing or maybe through a combination of water changes with a bit of dosing rather than just going by dosing alone. At this point you do not know if there’s lots of trace element consumption going on as well so you may send your system further out of whack with strictly two part dosing.

I’m getting the complete opposite
Monday I did a spin test and my parameters were
7.2 ALK
487 C
1297 mg
I dosed 10ml mag
I dosed 23ml ALK
This should have raised my ALK to 8.9

I’ve ran another spin test today (Friday)
And my parameters are

6.8 ALK
457 C
1368 MG

My ALK seems to be so unstable and is churning at such a fast rate the other 2 are stable and I’m pretty happy with where their sitting

What could be dropping it he ALK so quick?

 

[legacy2mj]

Hi all,

My alkalinity is around 11.8dkH which I test for, however, I had never tested for calcium or magnesium until now, my LFS ran calcium and magnesium tests and the results were

Alk: 11.8dkH
Cal: 390ppm
Mag: 1095ppm

I recently changed to Red Sea blue bucket which mixes to about 8dkH at 1.026SG, but I cannot get the alkalinity down, it'll take a lot of water changes. But the low magnesium is what I am unsure on, since I do have Tropic Marin All For Reef (Which I am not dosing at the moment, I'm not dosing anything at all right now) but that would raise the Alk.

Would it make sense to buy a separate magnesium supplement, and let the alkalinity drop through water changes? The alkalinity will take a long time to drop through consumption since my corals just aren't consuming any.

Would it be safe to purchase some more stony corals to help with lowering the alkalinity, or would I need to ideally raise the mag for them? Essentially what I'm saying is that the parameters seem to be all over the place currently, what would be the most simple solution to this?
Thanks

Test freshly mixed water from your blue bucket. I was getting weird readings using this salt as well so I tested a freshly mixed batch and Mag was super low in comparison to what was the advertised level.
I’m pretty sure Nyos attaches ICP results to every single bucket sold on how the batch in the bucket tested out. Maybe a solution to bring piece of mind as to what your putting in your tank before it ever touches coral.

 

[Brad Coughlan]

Test freshly mixed water from your blue bucket. I was getting weird readings using this salt as well so I tested a freshly mixed batch and Mag was super low in comparison to what was the advertised level.
I’m pretty sure Nyos attaches ICP results to every single bucket sold on how the batch in the bucket tested out. Maybe a solution to bring piece of mind as to what your putting in your tank before it ever touches coral.

Yeah, I tested alk on new saltwater and it was around 8, hard to be 100% accurate without a hanna checker which I am considering purchasing

Blue bucket also has an included ICP for the batch, but it never seems to send the results to me...

Ive managed to raise the mag to 1400ish in the tank

 

[gbroadbridge]

Couple of points:

The Hanna Alk checker is no more accurate than any other hobby grade test kit.
There is no such thing as an accurate hobby grade Magnesium test - just dont test and save time.
A spin checker is not accurate at all, and you would do better testing Alk with a Salifert test.
ICP reports for buckets of salt are subject to variation just like any ICP test.

Best bet, don't chase numbers.

 

[Brad Coughlan]

Couple of points:

The Hanna Alk checker is no more accurate than any other hobby grade test kit.
There is no such thing as an accurate hobby grade Magnesium test - just dont test and save time.
A spin checker is not accurate at all, and you would do better testing Alk with a Salifert test.
ICP reports for buckets of salt are subject to variation just like any ICP test.

Best bet, don't chase numbers.

Oh interesting
Would there be any benefit in purchasing the alk checker or is the only benefit just simplicity and time saving

 

[legacy2mj]

Couple of points:

The Hanna Alk checker is no more accurate than any other hobby grade test kit.
There is no such thing as an accurate hobby grade Magnesium test - just dont test and save time.
A spin checker is not accurate at all, and you would do better testing Alk with a Salifert test.
ICP reports for buckets of salt are subject to variation just like any ICP test.

Best bet, don't chase numbers.

Using a magnetic vial stirrer and the salifert tests I have recorded my results at the same time I send a ICP sample in and the numbers recorded were shockingly close. I don’t have them handy at the moment since it’s 4 AM and I don’t want to wake the house up. But I do feel the assistance of the magstir helps increase accuracy a lot. I also think the Nyos mag test kit is a little easier to get a good reading from due to the testing equipment. But regardless, the salifert and Nyos still produced the same results.
Keeping mag in a good range number wise I think is important because if you have ever needed to raise low mag levels then you know it feels like a race where the finish line is moving away from you at the same speed. For me it’s just easier to make sure I’m within acceptable range

 

[Reef.]

Have you confirmed your salinity? If your salt is 8dkh I very much doubt your salinity is correct if your alk is reading above 11, so either your salinity is high or your alk reading is wrong, therefore I would not be changing magnesium lvls based on your testing.

 

[legacy2mj]

Oh interesting
Would there be any benefit in purchasing the alk checker or is the only benefit just simplicity and time saving

IMO the only Hannah checkers I would want are Nitrate and Phosphate. Just cause the color matching on other test kits can be difficult.

 

[gbroadbridge]

Oh interesting
Would there be any benefit in purchasing the alk checker or is the only benefit just simplicity and time saving

I find the Salifert Alk test is much quicker (for me at least), than the Hanna.

By the time you have done all Hanna cuvette microfibre wiping down and then cleaned the cuvette after the test it's quite time consuming. And the result is no better than +/- 0.5 dKh which is similar to the Salifert.

 

[Brad Coughlan]

I find the Salifert Alk test is much quicker (for me at least), than the Hanna.

By the time you have done all Hanna cuvette microfibre wiping down and then cleaned the cuvette after the test it's quite time consuming. And the result is no better than +/- 0.5 dKh which is similar to the Salifert.

Ok fair enough

Quick question, when you use the Salifert, do you take the reading as soon as it turns pink or do you do it until it doesnt change shade anymore?

 

[Reef.]

Ok fair enough

Quick question, when you use the Salifert, do you take the reading as soon as it turns pink or do you do it until it doesnt change shade anymore?

No, it’s actually when it turns lavender, not pink, the instructions do show pink but there was an extensive testing on this and lavender is the correct stopping point.

First post in this thread explains.

Alkalinity titration endpoint pH & Salifert endpoint color

TL;DR: The endpoint pH is 4.41, and the endpoint color is that "lavender" color I've been telling people about. Over the years, there have been many threads on R2R and other forums debating a couple of basic details relevant to testing for alkalinity in reef aquaria. One of the most...

www.reef2reef.com