calcium 300 PPM, dosing 60 mL/day

[BonelessEvil]

okay, so Sunday I realized my tank was in trouble. I should have found out sooner, since one of my corals started looking unhappy by last Thursday. I tested my calcium and got 330 PPM. I'm trying to keep it at 450 PPM, but by Monday it dropped down to 300 PPM. Turns out my Apex was programmed wrong and wasn't dosing calcium for 2 days straight. (Yes, I should have caught this) so, I added 10 mL (Randy's reef recipe #1) immediately and using a reef calculator calculated out I needed to add #n calcium to the tank(I decided 60 mL/day). I started doing that and by Tuesday, it had gone up too much, to 400 PPM. I figured going up 100 PPM in one day was too much, so I backed off. I set it back to 5 mL x6 doses/day (mind you, for the last 4 months, I've only done 12 mL/day) and it went back down to 300.

So, I know I'm doing this wrong. What do I do? I've been hesitant to add a lot of calcium and feel as though doubling, tripling and quadrupling my additive seemed extreme. However, taking it slow has done me no good, as the calcium is hovering around 300.

tank specs:
reef itself is about 4 months old. Calcium has been fine up until now.
Red Sea 425 XL deluxe, 112 gallon, (minus rock and sump approximately 100 gallon)
alkalinity 9.7 (dosing 15.9 mL/day. Randy's reef recipe #1)

 

[BonelessEvil]

mind you, I've lost half the tank this week already. :-( so I need to solve this problem immediately

 

[Crabs McJones]

What test kit are you using to determine your calcium?

 

[BonelessEvil]

What test kit are you using to determine your calcium?

Red Sea

 

[Crabs McJones]

Red Sea

Thank you, lets get #reefsquad and @Randy Holmes-Farley in here, they may know more on how much cal you can add at a time

 

[Greenstreet.1]

What’s your salinity ?

 

[BonelessEvil]

between 34-35

 

[BonelessEvil]

could there be a problem with how I'm dosing? I've been doing 2 hours of calcium, then 2 hours of alkalinity… Back and forth all day. Both essentially get 6 doses, spread out throughout the day. Note: they are never on at the same time.

 

[hybridazn]

You can bump up calcium fast with no issues. Figure out how much 2 part you need to dose to get it back up to where you want it. Then either program your doser to dose that over the next 24 hours or you can simply add it manually in a couple large doses.

 

[BonelessEvil]

thank you. I'm using Randy's reef recipe #1 for my calcium and alkalinity. I have to come to guess on how many rocks I have, figuring that all of my rock could fill up my 12 gallon sump, so that's where I get my 100 gallons number. It's a guess. With that, the calculator is giving me this.

 

[BonelessEvil]

regarding the calcium recipe, I added 400 g of highway heat to 1 gallon of water and dissolved it. I think I got that correct.

 

[Sabellafella]

okay, so Sunday I realized my tank was in trouble. I should have found out sooner, since one of my corals started looking unhappy by last Thursday. I tested my calcium and got 330 PPM. I'm trying to keep it at 450 PPM, but by Monday it dropped down to 300 PPM. Turns out my Apex was programmed wrong and wasn't dosing calcium for 2 days straight. (Yes, I should have caught this) so, I added 10 mL (Randy's reef recipe #1) immediately and using a reef calculator calculated out I needed to add #n calcium to the tank(I decided 60 mL/day). I started doing that and by Tuesday, it had gone up too much, to 400 PPM. I figured going up 100 PPM in one day was too much, so I backed off. I set it back to 5 mL x6 doses/day (mind you, for the last 4 months, I've only done 12 mL/day) and it went back down to 300.

So, I know I'm doing this wrong. What do I do? I've been hesitant to add a lot of calcium and feel as though doubling, tripling and quadrupling my additive seemed extreme. However, taking it slow has done me no good, as the calcium is hovering around 300.

tank specs:
reef itself is about 4 months old. Calcium has been fine up until now.
Red Sea 425 XL deluxe, 112 gallon, (minus rock and sump approximately 100 gallon)
alkalinity 9.7 (dosing 15.9 mL/day. Randy's reef recipe #1)

Are your corals unhappy? It's fairly safe to add a substantial amount of calcium in one sitting but then again every tank reacts differently.

Get it up to 400 through the course of a couple of days and continue your daily dose to match your alk. (If it indeed is on par with consumption)

 

[BonelessEvil]

well, according to the calculator (see my image link) it seems like I need to raise it up 1432 mL + my daily usage. I still haven't figured out exactly what my corals are pulling on a constant basis, so any help there would be appreciated. And do you suggest I put 1432 mL over 3-4 days?

 

[hybridazn]

well, according to the calculator (see my image link) it seems like I need to raise it up 1432 mL + my daily usage. I still haven't figured out exactly what my corals are pulling on a constant basis, so any help there would be appreciated. And do you suggest I put 1432 mL over 3-4 days?

If this were alk I would say to def stretch it out that long, but being this is calcium I wouldn't stretch it out for longer than a day. It's really not necessary.

As for what the calculator has given you that is what you dose in a 24 hour period to get you to your desired level. No need to figure out daily consumption in addition to that.

 

[KJ]

Yours Mg #?

 

[BonelessEvil]

Yours Mg #?

1320

 

[BonelessEvil]

I got my calcium craziness fixed, but I'm still losing the whole reef (not including fish and invertebrates) –slowly but surely. all my acros, montis, with my plate coral being the proverbial canary in the coal mine are bleaching out. Could it be that using Seachem's sulfaplex to treat my new fish's velvet was a problem? The fish is doing better, but the reef… Sigh.

mind you, all my numbers look fine now and I just changed another 20 gallons of this 112 gallon aquarium (88 display, Reefer 425 deluxe XL). I do weekly water changes. I'm definitely not putting any more corals in the tank until I fix this problem.

 

[reefkoi]

I did a quick google search on the medication and this is from seachems website:Remove all invertebrates - these are extremely sensitive to medication.

corals are inverts so I think thats your issue

 

[Coralfuture]

I did a quick google search on the medication and this is from seachems website:Remove all invertebrates - these are extremely sensitive to medication.

corals are inverts so I think thats your issue

+1

How to proceed could be hard to say...

 

[Greenstreet.1]

You can run a polyfilter pad and carbon to remover the meds along with water changes