Dose at night or all day long?

cypho · Dec 9, 2017

Thanks to a new toy I have been monitoring my alk a lot more closely recently.

Seems like there are two choices, stable pH or stable Alk. You can dose at night to prevent the pH from falling, but that that causes the alk to go up at night and then fall back down over the course of the day. Or you can spread the dosing out over the whole 24 hour period and have stable alk, but the pH will plummet each night.

Which do you think our sticks prefer?

Randy Holmes-Farley · Dec 9, 2017

Depends (IMO) on how low the pH gets and how much alk you are dosing.

If the pH doesn't get below 7.8, I'd dose 24/7, or maybe just during the day (when alk consumption appears to be highest).

Highest alk stability may come from just daylight dosing.

XNavyDiver · Dec 9, 2017

This is what my dosing profile looks like. So far they have no complaints.

cypho · Dec 9, 2017

So far, one vote for stable alk and one for more stable pH. Will be interesting to see if there ends up being a consensus.

I've been dosing kalk when pH is < 8.2 no matter what the alk is, and then bicarbonate when pH is > 8.2 and alk is < 2.7 meq/L. But that is causing a daily 0.2 meq/L swing as it takes more Kalk to keep the pH up at night than is consumed at night.

FlyinBryan · Dec 9, 2017

I dose every 6 hours.

brianspider · Dec 10, 2017

Very interested in this question since I am running a sps dominated nano.

Night dose for pH stability
vs
day dose for alk stability
vs
compromise with 24 hour dosing

estebanb450 · Dec 10, 2017

I don’t monitor PH but I dose 6 times a day every 4 hrs everything seems to be doing great. 50gal water volume

Hitman · Dec 10, 2017

I dose every 4 hours with a 2 hour separation between Alk & Ca.

4ml ESV Ca @ 0000, 0400, 0800, 1200, 1600, 2000

4ml ESV Alk @ 0200, 0600, 1000, 1400, 1800, 2200

Scorpius · Dec 10, 2017

I dose 24 hrs around the clock. Stable alkalinity is more important to me than ph.

Velcro · Dec 10, 2017

I dose 230ml of kalk over roughly ten minutes every hour.

BoomCorals · Dec 10, 2017

Scorpius said:
I dose 24 hrs around the clock. Stable alkalinity is more important to me than ph.

Ditto. I use the Neptune DOS so it breaks it up over a 24 hour period, running every 10 minutes.

zoasaholic · Dec 10, 2017

Stability is the key
Reason I’m started to dose @8am because I would like to be able to measure my dosing pump accuracy on the weekend

Randy Holmes-Farley · Dec 10, 2017

Scorpius said:
I dose 24 hrs around the clock. Stable alkalinity is more important to me than ph.

Which might suggest you should dose only or mostly during the day. A number of folks that now use very frequent alk monitoring are finding the alk depletes mostly during the day.

saltyfilmfolks · Dec 10, 2017

I've broken my dosing into three doses over 24hrs.

In my sumpless tank, I dose the alk more At night, in my sumped tank with a large fuge , all the doses are the same.

I didn't split it into 4 , because the amount is is quite low. IMO.

BoomCorals · Dec 10, 2017

Randy Holmes-Farley said:
Which might suggest you should dose only or mostly during the day. A number of folks that now use very frequent alk monitoring are finding the alk depletes mostly during the day.

For me it’s the opposite. Alk depletes heavily at night.