- Joined
- Dec 26, 2017
- Messages
- 170
- Reaction score
- 174
I have a fairly new setup that is about 4 months old. It has 250 gallons of total water volume. As for calcium demand I have maybe 10-15 lps, a handful of softies, and maybe 50 or so snails of varying size. Also I have been starting to get some small corraline algae growth. I have been testing Ca and alk to see when I need to start dosing. I plan on using kalkwaser in the ato initially. The strange thing is my calcium hasn’t fallen at all but actually the opposite, it has risen. Initially I was getting reading of 460 Ca and 8-9 dkh. This is with api test. This makes sense with the fritz rpm salt I am using. About a month in my tests started consistently reading 500 Ca with the 8-9 dkh. Just tested yesterday and had 500 Ca and 8 dkh. Is this normal? I’ve considered the test kit may be bad but since the alkalinity test is steady too this leads me to believe something else may be happening. Only other thing I could think of adding calcium to the water is that I drilled my rocks for aquascaping and didn’t really clean the dust off too well. Is it possible this is adding calcium to the water? Gonna try to mix up some fresh saltwater to compare my test results with. Any other thoughts? When should I normally expect to start dosing? Am I just being impatient?