Alkatronic mode Overdose

[fushi]

My Alkatronic and dosetronic in automatic dosing adjustment mode decided to change my alk dose from 34.7ml/day to 10554.7ml/day. So the entire bottle of alk (sodium hydroxide) was dosed.

My blotchy Anthis is a floater and the other fish I can see up against the glass don’t look well.

Alk at 13.97 dkh after 6ml of 2n sulphuric acid (what I had on hand)
Working on a 30% water change now.


Any suggestions? 80gal mixed reef

 

[fushi]

Still extremely cloudy after 30% water change.
I added a power filter in the sump to help clear up the precipitation.
I added 8ml more sulphuric acid.
I also found some seachem acid buffer and added 8g of that.

I can’t see the fish to catch and relocate, however my yellow tang has been jump out of the water randomly.

Probably gonna call it a night here.

 

[~Jay~]

Still extremely cloudy after 30% water change.
I added a power filter in the sump to help clear up the precipitation.
I added 8ml more sulphuric acid.
I also found some seachem acid buffer and added 8g of that.

I can’t see the fish to catch and relocate, however my yellow tang has been jump out of the water randomly.

Probably gonna call it a night here.

Hi, sorry to be seeing this, i had the same thing happen a few weeks back.

My only advice, forget the corals, they are toast, have some salted ready, start draining the tank and catch fish as you see them to put into a bucket or whatever.

Water changes will not help, I played thats game, hundreds of litres of water and nothing happened, still like milk, it wasn't until the next day, this is when I knew it was to late, and why I'm saying save your fish.

The money pit....... just got deeper!

Wow some amazing pics, how’s the gold flake doing is it leaving your lps alone Doing fine cheers, the only lps are the chalices and goni's, I've not seen it nipping those, that's the job of the bloody emperor! It lives on eye or two of the raja, but as soon at it heals, I find a bit more damage.

www.ultimatereef.net

 

[Ishy]

A friend has just been in this exact same situation. You need to catch all the fish and put them in fresh salt water as soon as possible.
All the water changes will make little difference I'm afraid.

 

[VintageReefer]

Instead of water change you should be making new water and moving fish into one of those large white brute bins

That 30% is 24g and would probably be enough to house fish for several days while you fix the tank

They ship tangs and other fish in less than a gallon of water in a plastic bag and that’s more than enough for 24-48 hours.

 

[fushi]

A friend has just been in this exact same situation. You need to catch all the fish and put them in fresh salt water as soon as possible.
All the water changes will make little difference I'm afraid.

Thanks it was late and by the time got the water clear enough to see any fish with a flash light the catchable fish had died. Unfortunately most of my fish are small and hide in the rock so I would have had to break down the tank.

 

[fushi]

Instead of water change you should be making new water and moving fish into one of those large white brute bins

That 30% is 24g and would probably be enough to house fish for several days while you fix the tank

They ship tangs and other fish in less than a gallon of water in a plastic bag and that’s more than enough for 24-48 hours.

Catching the fish wasn't really possible due to the clarity of the water and my rock work.

I wish I just bit the bullet and broke down the tank last night, as I have a spare system to keep everything in, but not enough time today and am out of town tomorrow.

 

[fushi]

Todays update. My cleaner wrasse is alive along with my cardinal and algae blenny.

Most of the coral look ok, some started to brown out, and a few peel.

The power filters are helping clear up the water.
This mornings all reading was 15.4dkh


I don’t have time to breakdown the tank before I leave town, so dosing seachem acid buffer and a 40% water change is my plan for today.

 

[VintageReefer]

Do you have any idea how the auto doser exceeded it’s programmed limits? Anything in logs? Did it take an unusually low reading and try to compensate ? Was it a siphon issue and alk mix kept dripping ?

 

[fushi]

Alkatronic removed my post from their facebook help group and said they would contact me about my mistake.
Cant wait to hear how this is my mistake, and why it’s even possible for the Alkatronic to adjust my dose by 300% in “Alkatronic mode”? I was led to believe it was super safe and redundant…..

 

[dedragon]

I was led to believe it was super safe and redundant…..

You followed their instructions, had it set up and working, and then it randomly dosed an entire bottle of alk. Clearly this is your mistake and not their product at all. Cant wait to see how they explain it

 

[fushi]

Do you have any idea how the auto doser exceeded it’s programmed limits? Anything in logs? Did it take an unusually low reading and try to compensate ? Was it a siphon issue and alk mix kept dripping ?

I turned on “Alkatronic mode” a month ago and it seemed to work just fine, it would adjust my Alk dose to keep it in my selected range (8.2 - 8.8dkh) and tested 3x a day.

Yesterday the Alkatronic did its last test of the day after I went to bed, It got a result of 7.81dkh (the previous test was 8.06dkh) so I guess the Alkatronic algorithm didn’t like the trend and adjusted my alk dose from 34.7ml/day to 10554.7ml/day; which doses at 271.89ml/hour + a compensation dose to get my alk back up to 8.2dkh.
The entire container of alk got dosed which was a little over a liter.

 

[VintageReefer]

That’s ridiculous. Contact them

 

[fushi]

You followed their instructions, had it set up and working, and then it randomly dosed an entire bottle of alk. Clearly this is your mistake and not their product at all. Cant wait to see how they explain it

I really like my Focustronic products, Automatic testing has saved me a ton of time I had no issues for over a month before deciding to trust the Alkatronic automatic dosing adjustments. I was alway skeptical of automated dosing adjustments and wish I just stuck with that skepticism. It only takes a few seconds to adjust a dose in the app.

Well see what Focustronic tells me what I did wrong, but the way I see it is an automatic 300% adjustment shouldn’t be possible.

 

[fushi]

That’s ridiculous. Contact them

Apparently “Reddie” from Focustronic will contact me. So well see what what they say

 

[VintageReefer]

Apparently “Reddie” from Focustronic will contact me. So well see what what they say

“Reddie” better be ready to offer compensation

Is there a fail safe for max dosing amount? I don’t use your product, I have a KH Guardian, and it calculates the drop and auto doses back to the set point. It has a max dose setting…so if I see my daily is usually 30-40 ml, I can have a max setting of 50 or whatever I want and in event the machine takes a bad reading and it’s very low, and it calculated I need 100ml, it would only dose 50ml. I believe if it gets a strange reading it also redoes the test a second time to confirm

Are they any safeties like that on yours?

 

[VintageReefer]

You followed their instructions, had it set up and working, and then it randomly dosed an entire bottle of alk. Clearly this is your mistake and not their product at all. Cant wait to see how they explain it

 

[fushi]

I have not dosed or changed the water today.

But got an alk of 7.7dkh on the Hanna and now the Alkatronic is showing 8.37dkh.

Ph on the Alkatronic is reading 3.7 and my apex probe is showing 8.81

 

[fushi]

corals aren’t looking well

 

[fushi]

The bad readings on the Alkatronic were due to a small algae clog in the sample line, but that still no excuse for dosing thousands of milliliters of Alk!

According the the manual the AI algorithms should dose “dkh in a smooth and safe way”