Hello Reefing family! I need opinions on a possible issue with my Trident. I run the ATI essentials program and like to keep my ALK around 7.3, my corals tend to look better and grow just fine at that level. Initially I thought testing 4 times per day minimum was a bit much, however, overtime you really see how changes can impact your corals consumption.
A little bit about the tank: the goal is an SPS dominant display. I have mainly small colonies of various species of SPS, and at the current moment I’m in reboot mode. The aquarium was established Feb of this year and is a transfer from an existing reef (Upgraded to a larger tank) that’s been in operation for over 2 years. Per a recent ICP test, my tin level were 53.99 µg / l…..and I was dealing with bubble algae; between treating the tank with vibrant, high levels of tin and water changing a large percentage of water (my fault) to correct the high levels of tin, I lost a fair bit of my colonies. I believe the source of tin was contaminated water from a LFS…still investigating this.
Back to the issue, due to all the changes I had to reduce my dosing because the number of corals and I think they were ticked anyway. I stopped dosing ALK/ CAL completely due to the slow rise of alk..that was on 06/18. My issue is despite my not dosing, the ALK levels continues to rise and fluctuate, per the trident test results. Ill be testing with a salifert kit today, has anyone run into this issue? Please see Trident graph below…. keep in mind I hadn’t dosed ALK or CAL since 06/18 and I have some sps colonies remaining. Lastly please see the last few results. My Alk according to the trident results went from 8.09 (Midnight this morning) to 8.2 (6am this morning) … the result seemed really weird so I reran the ALK test again (7:46am this morning) and it dropped from 8.2 back to 8.09…..
A little bit about the tank: the goal is an SPS dominant display. I have mainly small colonies of various species of SPS, and at the current moment I’m in reboot mode. The aquarium was established Feb of this year and is a transfer from an existing reef (Upgraded to a larger tank) that’s been in operation for over 2 years. Per a recent ICP test, my tin level were 53.99 µg / l…..and I was dealing with bubble algae; between treating the tank with vibrant, high levels of tin and water changing a large percentage of water (my fault) to correct the high levels of tin, I lost a fair bit of my colonies. I believe the source of tin was contaminated water from a LFS…still investigating this.
Back to the issue, due to all the changes I had to reduce my dosing because the number of corals and I think they were ticked anyway. I stopped dosing ALK/ CAL completely due to the slow rise of alk..that was on 06/18. My issue is despite my not dosing, the ALK levels continues to rise and fluctuate, per the trident test results. Ill be testing with a salifert kit today, has anyone run into this issue? Please see Trident graph below…. keep in mind I hadn’t dosed ALK or CAL since 06/18 and I have some sps colonies remaining. Lastly please see the last few results. My Alk according to the trident results went from 8.09 (Midnight this morning) to 8.2 (6am this morning) … the result seemed really weird so I reran the ALK test again (7:46am this morning) and it dropped from 8.2 back to 8.09…..