I transitioned off a 7+ year old tank and I'm 3 months into my new tank and have been struggling with getting my dosing regiment in.
I started with 7ish Alk and a PH between 7.8 and 7.9. I use Brightwell Neomarine salt and have higher CO2 in the house.
I decided to go Kalkwasser to get the PH bump. See this thread:
I was going ULM, and automated the dosing limiting Alk to no more than 8.5 and PH to 8.3. Interestingly enough, the PH and Alk were both going up as expected and I seemed to be consuming a good amount (.5 to 1dkh a day). Then I had a Kalk reactor leak and had to shut it down for about a day. The PH and Alk prior to that seems stable around 8ish dKH and 8.07. Then the PH dropped as expected but the Alk then continued to rise over 9dkh.
After about a week the Alk came down below 8.5 and the dosing began again...and in 24 my Alk went up by 1dKH...which was about what I was adding in Kalkwasser (as if there was no consumption).
So automation shutoff kalk. Several days later, Alk is below 8.5dKH, and we repeat the cycle:
You can see by the PH readings that the highest peak is where the cutoff happened. But note, the Alk skyrockets after Kalk has been stopped (I don't have a good explanation for this).
Based on many articles, higher PH can have a big effect of Alk/Ca consumption and coral growth. But with my automation (8.5dKH cutoff) my pH would drop...reducing consumption. However, I need consumption to keep dosing Kalk to keep my elevated PH. This becomes a chicken and egg situation.
So to overcome this, I threw in some more faster growing frags (to up consumption) and turned off the automation part and am just dosing .5dKH in 24hrs of Kalkwasser.
I'll monitor the Alk, but focus for now on maintaining a higher PH and see what happens.
My thought is that the higher PH will increase the uptake of Alk/Ca and allow me to continue and eventually increase Kalkwasser dosing.
There are other explanations for my difficulties in getting my parameters locked in. My GHL KH Director may not be accurate...however it mostly syncs up with my Hanna Alk spot checks. It could also be that my initial Kalk dosing wasn't saturated (definitely not based on mS readings...I've switched to a magnetic kalk stirrer that does a much better job at keeping Kalkwasser saturated). My small collection of frags may not be soaking up much Alk/Ca.
Curious on what the R2R Community thinks.
I started with 7ish Alk and a PH between 7.8 and 7.9. I use Brightwell Neomarine salt and have higher CO2 in the house.
I decided to go Kalkwasser to get the PH bump. See this thread:
Advice for a complete supplement dosing that utilizes Kalkwasser
I'm using BSR Kalk and a KS-100 stirrer and pH is reflecting dose added. Last couple of dKH readings have been going up so maybe substrate/rock/CUC was absorbing the initial dosing and now the numbers are rising. With the re-calibrated GHL, my dKH is showing about a .2dKH drop in 6hrs (I...
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I was going ULM, and automated the dosing limiting Alk to no more than 8.5 and PH to 8.3. Interestingly enough, the PH and Alk were both going up as expected and I seemed to be consuming a good amount (.5 to 1dkh a day). Then I had a Kalk reactor leak and had to shut it down for about a day. The PH and Alk prior to that seems stable around 8ish dKH and 8.07. Then the PH dropped as expected but the Alk then continued to rise over 9dkh.
After about a week the Alk came down below 8.5 and the dosing began again...and in 24 my Alk went up by 1dKH...which was about what I was adding in Kalkwasser (as if there was no consumption).
So automation shutoff kalk. Several days later, Alk is below 8.5dKH, and we repeat the cycle:
You can see by the PH readings that the highest peak is where the cutoff happened. But note, the Alk skyrockets after Kalk has been stopped (I don't have a good explanation for this).
Based on many articles, higher PH can have a big effect of Alk/Ca consumption and coral growth. But with my automation (8.5dKH cutoff) my pH would drop...reducing consumption. However, I need consumption to keep dosing Kalk to keep my elevated PH. This becomes a chicken and egg situation.
So to overcome this, I threw in some more faster growing frags (to up consumption) and turned off the automation part and am just dosing .5dKH in 24hrs of Kalkwasser.
I'll monitor the Alk, but focus for now on maintaining a higher PH and see what happens.
My thought is that the higher PH will increase the uptake of Alk/Ca and allow me to continue and eventually increase Kalkwasser dosing.
There are other explanations for my difficulties in getting my parameters locked in. My GHL KH Director may not be accurate...however it mostly syncs up with my Hanna Alk spot checks. It could also be that my initial Kalk dosing wasn't saturated (definitely not based on mS readings...I've switched to a magnetic kalk stirrer that does a much better job at keeping Kalkwasser saturated). My small collection of frags may not be soaking up much Alk/Ca.
Curious on what the R2R Community thinks.