Alkalinity Question: Should I be doing something?

[SomeHappyFish]

My tank tested at 7.212dKH (129ppm) and my new saltmix gives me an alk of 8.1 (145ppm). I will be doing a waterchange now but should I be raising my tank alk back up to about 8dkh where my salt mixes?

I will be performing another test 24h after my waterchange to see how much it has raise the dKH

I guess my reef started at around 8dKh and slowly went to 7.2 but the waterchange were not enough.

Cal 395ppm
MG 1370
Salt Aquaforest Sea Salt (its almost done, I will be using reefsalt soon)
I can post my logs if needed.

 

[RockBox13]

Where does your pH tend to be?

 

[SomeHappyFish]

Where does your pH tend to be?

Using the salifert Test kit its hard to say but around 8 - 8.15. When i test, its almost dark enough to be 8.15 but its not..

 

[RockBox13]

I’m in a constant battle against this trend of keeping Alkalinity lower at 8 and paying no attention to the pH in favor of the Nitrate and Phosphate levels. Especially in a newer tank where where it pretty much guarantees that you’re gonna get Dinoflagellates and your Acropora will have the flesh peel away from them, always predictably from the bottom up. I suggest setting your Alk at 10-12 and learn how to gravel vacuum and keep your pH at 8.3-8.4 for weeks or months at a time without a doser and controller. That’s stability. Someone will chime in and say, “but my tank has Alk at 8 and my pH is 8.0 and I’ve never had any issues.” They won’t ask anything about your tank set up, how you do water changes or anything else. It’s just anecdotal statements and never any pictures of proof and they won’t tell you anything else about their set up and procedures that might be different from yours. If you have a newer reef tank, you should get that level up. If you look at this Mac’s Reef guide to beating Dinoflagellates it straight up says to gravel vac and keep your pH in the “magical range” of 8.3-8.5. Most buffer/alkalinity is blended in a way that is meant to go up to pH 8.4 and stay there even if you overshoot KH by a lot. Oh, but if raise your Alkalinity, your corals are going to burn. So just be prepared for those voices to start giving their opinions that aren’t ever backed up with facts or examples of a credible incident where it’s halfway believable. Now, it looks like Mac’s Reef guide to dealing with Dinoflagellates agrees more with my point of view.