Cal and Mag staying high???

[Eskew77]

I’m having trouble understanding this…. My alk, cal, mag, nitrate and phosphate have all been stable and solid at the following levels:
2/17

Sal 1.025 temp 77.7

Ph 8.0

Alk 8.4

Cal 460

Mag 1560

Nitrate 7.7

Phosphate 0.00

What I’m not understanding is I’m only dosing for alk with esv bionic part 1 and everything else is staying high. I haven’t done a water change in 4 months and the tank is only about 8 mos old. Also my phosphate won’t budge from 0 and I’ve already fought with Dino’s once…. It sucks, and would prefer to not have to again. I ordered sodium phosphate to start dosing. So hopefully that fixes that issue.

It’s a small Nuvo 30l AIO set up. I’m running filter floss, maxspect biospheres, and a small bit of carbon in the first chamber caddy. im running a midsize IM skimmer in the second chamber and a UV sterilizer in the last.
It’s lightly stocked with lps and softies. And has a clown, scooter blenny and neon cleaner goby for fish. The clean up crew consists of 5 nasurius snails, 3 blue leg hermits, 5 astrea snails and a blood shrimp.

Here’s a link to a video of it I just took tonight. It looks like diatoms are already starting to show and I just cleaned the sand bed 2 days ago.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

How much alk are you dosing?

 

[Eskew77]

Only 1 ml a day

 

[Hincapiej4]

Only 1 ml a day

That's not much. Here's the thing man, it's been 4 months. That's well within the time frame for bad stuff to happen.

My advice? If the coral LOOK FINE, LEAVE IT ALONE. Hold the course, keep doing what you are doing. DO NOT FIX WHAT'S NOT BROKEN. Keep testing, once you need a water change, then do it. Don't start messing around for no reason.

 

[Hincapiej4]

Also, phos being 0 is a little issue, but once you get that in place, leave everything else alone.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Only 1 ml a day

Of what?

 

[Eskew77]

Of what?

ESV bionic part1

 

[Eskew77]

… this

 

[Eskew77]

That's not much. Here's the thing man, it's been 4 months. That's well within the time frame for bad stuff to happen.

My advice? If the coral LOOK FINE, LEAVE IT ALONE. Hold the course, keep doing what you are doing. DO NOT FIX WHAT'S NOT BROKEN. Keep testing, once you need a water change, then do it. Don't start messing around for no reason.

I agree. And if I was planning on keeping lps and softies I would. But my ultimate goal is a mixed reef with sps on the clear spots I left in the rock work. Im trying to balance patience and not over working things to get my parameters in check to keep sps with out too many failures.

 

[Eskew77]

So after reading a lot more I’m wondering if it’s the phosphates binding to dry rock. Would this still be happening after 8 months? It’s 20 year old Florida rock I bought from a local reefer. Admittedly it’s a bit overkill at about 70 lbs.

 

[Pod_01]

Just my experience with phosphate. I have 10gal tank that I set up 5 months or so ago. I used couple of rocks from my larger system that I had in the sump and put in some corals. Experiment on my part to see if I could do tank without cycling.

Hera are pictures of the corals:

So for phosphate after some consideration I ended up using Tropic Marin Phos Start. It has phosphate and some N in it and is intended for new tanks.

So far no Dino’s and the only algae that I have is what was on some corals that I moved from the larger tank. No algae outbreak or the ugly phase yet. I have not measured PO4 so not sure what it is but I do like the TM Phos Start. Corals seem good so far.

Since it is new tank the Alk and Calcium consumption is insignificant. So I am thinking of dosing TM A and K elements… My long term plan is to use TM AFR on this tank.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

1 mL of the alk part of ESV B-ionic is adding about 0.07 dKH to 30 gallons of water.

Assuming that is all going into calcium carbonate, that would only consume about 0.5 ppm of calcium and much less than 0.1 ppm of magnesium per day.

In reality, with such low alk demand, it may be from processes such as nitrate accumulation which consume no calcium or magnesium.

Thus, water changes can easily offset those low levels of calcium and magnesium consumption.

I suspect the magnesium level is a test error, and I'd definitely stop measuring it since it will never change from the salt mix level in the current situation.

I'd also stop bothering to measure calcium and just use both parts of B-ionic equally. Maybe remeasure calcium in a month or two.

 

[Eskew77]

1 mL of the alk part of ESV B-ionic is adding about 0.07 dKH to 30 gallons of water.

Assuming that is all going into calcium carbonate, that would only consume about 0.5 ppm of calcium and much less than 0.1 ppm of magnesium per day.

In reality, with such low alk demand, it may be from processes such as nitrate accumulation which consume no calcium or magnesium.

Thus, water changes can easily offset those low levels of calcium and magnesium consumption.

I suspect the magnesium level is a test error, and I'd definitely stop measuring it since it will never change from the salt mix level in the current situation.

I'd also stop bothering to measure calcium and just use both parts of B-ionic equally. Maybe remeasure calcium in a month or two.

Thanks for the reply Randy. I’ll do that and revisit this thread in a month with the test results.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Thanks for the reply Randy. I’ll do that and revisit this thread in a month with the test results.

You're welcome.

Happy Reefing. :)