All consumption completely stalling

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Marc2952

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Should i do a water change to drop it down a bit? Or is it better to slowly drop it again?
 

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I never test PH tbh, now that you mention it i have had to leave the windows close for this whole week since its so hot here in nyc and i gotta leave the AC on.

If you’re used to having open windows and changed to closed that could definitely be a factor. I’ve see a whole 0.5 pH change. Recently went on vacation and my alk consumption, pH jumped and nutrients plummeted. I’ve also gotten a CO2 monitor and house CO2 levels can change from 300ppm to 1000pm in days.
 

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@Marc2952 , I noticed that you haven't mentioned your Ca or Mg levels. Alk is tied to Ca and Mg in consumption and levels. A good read from @Randy Holmes-Farley, who may wish to chime in, is worthy of your time.
 
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@Marc2952 , I noticed that you haven't mentioned your Ca or Mg levels. Alk is tied to Ca and Mg in consumption and levels. A good read from @Randy Holmes-Farley, who may wish to chime in, is worthy of your time.
Yea forgot to mention i dose 5ml less cal then alk to keep it stable at 440ppm and MG i keep at 1340.
 
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Marc2952

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I would leave everything as is, except try and open the window for a while, blow a fan, then heavily aerate the water. Do a pH test before and after.
That may be one of the culprits indeed, feels like 100 here in nyc idk how people it florida do it lol
 

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Something else is going on here. It's very difficult to pinpoint what, exactly, it may be. Since you are virtually done with your fallow period, I would bring everything back up and running as you did before all this began. Turning off things like the refugium may have unseen, delayed, and confounding consequences. Double-check your top-off water, RO/DI filters & resins, and continue to monitor. Often, whenever we do things differently or change things the consequences are not always understood due to a combination of cause and effect. It always amazes me how one small change can snowball into a myriad of cascading problems.
 
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Something else is going on here. It's very difficult to pinpoint what, exactly, it may be. Since you are virtually done with your fallow period, I would bring everything back up and running as you did before all this began. Turning off things like the refugium may have unseen, delayed, and confounding consequences. Double-check your top-off water, RO/DI filters & resins, and continue to monitor. Often, whenever we do things differently or change things the consequences are not always understood due to a combination of cause and effect. It always amazes me how one small change can snowball into a myriad of cascading problems.
Yea so many variables im going to try and get it back stable again and not make any changes. I wont even do a water change to see how things go( tbh theres no need for water change at the moment since there is no fish and ESV has most of the trace elements) i dis change the RO/DI resins last month so it should be good, i will also do an ICP test to make sure everything is fine.
 

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My tank is almost 2 years old now and have been dosing ESV b ionic for about 8 months now with great results. But for the last week ive been having to lower the dosage gradually from 28ml a day to 13ml a day wince the alk just keeps increasing. I ususally like to keep it between 8.0-8.2 but its up to 9.2 now! test my alk daily so thats why ive been slowly decreasing the dosage if not who knows how high it could have gotten. Ive been dosing nitrates and phosphates aswell as adding pellets 4 times a day to keep it from tanking since im currently going through a fallow period. I know that dosing nitrates can increase alk a bit but it cant be to that extent.

Dosing nitrate that is consumed adds alkalinity.

That would explain a lowering of demand for additional alkalinity.
 

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I never test PH tbh, now that you mention it i have had to leave the windows close for this whole week since its so hot here in nyc and i gotta leave the AC on.

As noted above, that likely lowered pH which in turn lowers demand for alkalinity and calcium.
 
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Marc2952

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Dosing nitrate that is consumed adds alkalinity.

That would explain a lowering of demand for additional alkalinity.
So would it technically be better to dose ammonia since the bacteria that uses ammonia to convert to nitrate also uses alk in the process? And therefore the end result technically being 0 alk increase? Because feeding alone is not enough sadly since im already feeding 5 times a day and havent even changed the sock in weeks aswell as remove the skimmer cup a couple hours a day.
 

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Yea this is probably adding to the problem but its hard to control that in this type of weather here sadly.

pH control is among the harder aspects of reefkeeping for many folks, especially those in newer homes or apartments that are tighter with respect to air flow.
 
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pH control is among the harder aspects of reefkeeping for many folks, especially those in newer homes or apartments that are tighter with respect to air flow.
Yea this is gonna be a constant issue specially in the winter when windows have to stay close. I cant just kick everyone out to lower the CO2 LOL
 

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Yea this is gonna be a constant issue specially in the winter when windows have to stay close. I cant just kick everyone out to lower the CO2 LOL

Same here in Texas, plus allergies year round. It doesn't work for everyone, but a CO2 scrubber definitely works well for me. I use the canister from BRS connected to my skimmer. No recirculating or anything fancy.

Heres my pH after I forgot to replace the media, and then refilled it. I think you can see the difference.

64012085-7AAD-426C-870D-110278CC1660.jpeg


Media I get from medvet. This container lasts me about a year:

 
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dang lost my TCK sour polyp, completely RTN in a day
 

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Same here in Texas, plus allergies year round. It doesn't work for everyone, but a CO2 scrubber definitely works well for me. I use the canister from BRS connected to my skimmer. No recirculating or anything fancy.

Heres my pH after I forgot to replace the media, and then refilled it. I think you can see the difference.

64012085-7AAD-426C-870D-110278CC1660.jpeg


Media I get from medvet. This container lasts me about a year:

Interesting although i must say i tested my PH with the salifert and it seems to stay at 8.1 when i check im sure there are swings though
 

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So would it technically be better to dose ammonia since the bacteria that uses ammonia to convert to nitrate also uses alk in the process? And therefore the end result technically being 0 alk increase? Because feeding alone is not enough sadly since im already feeding 5 times a day and havent even changed the sock in weeks aswell as remove the skimmer cup a couple hours a day.

IMO, dosing ammonia is better, but certainly also more complicated since you do not want to add much at a time.
 

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If you want to try an experiment you might want to add something like this to the aquarium(I think you might want to add it in a mesh filter sock with water flowing through it). Screenshot_20210630-195308_Samsung Internet.jpg
If you don't want to add that, I would recommend dosing ammonium chloride, or at a minimum continue adding fish food, and dose Fritz F/2 algae food, or dose the vitamins it has in it, and also I think it may help to dose some organic fulvic acid(I'm dosing it).
 
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