I have a 6 month old tank - that has a mixed variety of corals - not really heavily stocked yet, as I want the tank to be a little more 'stable'. But I do have 10 zoas, 3 hammers, 2 frogspawn, 2 torches, 6 various types of encrusting corals (raja rampage, space invaders), and a few stick sps. I use an Apex Dos and Trident to dos 2 part - and it's been keeping things pretty stable for the last couple of months. Alk was holding around 8.8, and Calc around 450. The apex was dosing about 25mls of alk, and until last Wednesday - about 10mls of Calcium per day to maintain these levels.
Then I noticed things started to change.....while alk is staying consistent, my calcium level dropped from 450 to 390 - over the past week. My trident has been adjusting the calcium dosage up in order to try to keep up, and as of today, it is dosing 40ml of calcium a day - and has only brought the tested level up to 415. At first I thought maybe it was a trident testing error - so I double checked with the Hanna. I know the level is still fine, but I'm wondering why would the tank be consuming more calcium at this time, and not also consume more alk? Is this an issue I should worry about - or is it the tank trying to figure things out, and I need to let it do its thing?
For reference:
Nitrate 10ppm
PO4 - .04ppm
Mag: 1390
Salinity - 34
temp 77
PH - 8.1
I have been using NoPox to bring down my nitrates - which it finally did -, and am now slowly ramping it down to find my maintenance dose. I also started dosing RedSea colors last week - after my ICP test came back showing low trace elements. And I use RedSeas AB+ (half dose) - every other day.
Then I noticed things started to change.....while alk is staying consistent, my calcium level dropped from 450 to 390 - over the past week. My trident has been adjusting the calcium dosage up in order to try to keep up, and as of today, it is dosing 40ml of calcium a day - and has only brought the tested level up to 415. At first I thought maybe it was a trident testing error - so I double checked with the Hanna. I know the level is still fine, but I'm wondering why would the tank be consuming more calcium at this time, and not also consume more alk? Is this an issue I should worry about - or is it the tank trying to figure things out, and I need to let it do its thing?
For reference:
Nitrate 10ppm
PO4 - .04ppm
Mag: 1390
Salinity - 34
temp 77
PH - 8.1
I have been using NoPox to bring down my nitrates - which it finally did -, and am now slowly ramping it down to find my maintenance dose. I also started dosing RedSea colors last week - after my ICP test came back showing low trace elements. And I use RedSeas AB+ (half dose) - every other day.