Dosing alk?

gasperagnes

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Hi everyone,

I am new to the game and I was wondering if I am dosing alk correctly. I have my dos systems running off the trident. I am trying peg my alk at 9dkh. I am using a tremendous amount of alk per day. 155 ml. Is this normal? The tank has been up and running for a few months. Coral is not growing.My tank paremeters are as follows

180 GALLON TANK
40 GALLON SUMP
20 GALLON REFUGIUM
MAG- 1380
CAL-415
ALK-8.5 - 9


I have about 26 corals mixed. I have noticed a hardened crust on my heater and the dand hardening a bit. Any help would be greatly appreciated

Regards
 

Waters

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Not saying this is the cause of yours, but any new tank I have ever set up that had a substrate used almost triple the ALK as my BB tanks do. Is your sandbed becoming solid (especially places like around and underneath the rock)? Also, what salt mix are you using (what are your starting numbers)?
 

Randy Holmes-Farley

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Hi everyone,

I am new to the game and I was wondering if I am dosing alk correctly. I have my dos systems running off the trident. I am trying peg my alk at 9dkh. I am using a tremendous amount of alk per day. 155 ml. Is this normal? The tank has been up and running for a few months. Coral is not growing.My tank paremeters are as follows

180 GALLON TANK
40 GALLON SUMP
20 GALLON REFUGIUM
MAG- 1380
CAL-415
ALK-8.5 - 9


I have about 26 corals mixed. I have noticed a hardened crust on my heater and the dand hardening a bit. Any help would be greatly appreciated

Regards

As folks have noted, mL of a random alk product tells little about what you are actually dosing. It's like asking if 6 cups of a beverage is too much to drink each day. Different alk products have different potencies and different tendencies to cause precipitation of calcium carbonate.

By far the best way to ask such a question is to provided the alk dosed per day in dKH per day (using a calculator if you need to), but second best is to provide mL per day and name of the product, forcing readers to pull up a calculator and convert it to dKH per day to assess whether it is excessive or not, and by how much.
 
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gasperagnes

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Not saying this is the cause of yours, but any new tank I have ever set up that had a substrate used almost triple the ALK as my BB tanks do. Is your sandbed becoming solid (especially places like around and underneath the rock)? Also, what salt mix are you using (what are your starting numbers)?
yes the sand bed is hard around rocks and there is a white crust on the heater. I am using red sea coral salt pro.
 
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gasperagnes

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As folks have noted, mL of a random alk product tells little about what you are actually dosing. It's like asking if 6 cups of a beverage is too much to drink each day. Different alk products have different potencies and different tendencies to cause precipitation of calcium carbonate.

By far the best way to ask such a question is to provided the alk dosed per day in dKH per day (using a calculator if you need to), but second best is to provide mL per day and name of the product, forcing readers to pull up a calculator and convert it to dKH per day to assess whether it is excessive or not, and by how much.
its dropping 1 dkh per day and I am using esv 2 part system
 
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Waters

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yes the sand bed is hard around rocks and there is a white crust on the heater. I am using red sea coral salt pro.
Ok that is most likely where a good portion of your high ALK demand is coming from.......I never believed it until I set up my first BB tank and so how much less ALK my tank demanded with the same coral load.
 
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gasperagnes

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Ok that is most likely where a good portion of your high ALK demand is coming from.......I never believed it until I set up my first BB tank and so how much less ALK my tank demanded with the same coral load.
Is going to be the norm ? Or will it eventually subside ?
 
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gasperagnes

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Thank you
As folks have noted, mL of a random alk product tells little about what you are actually dosing. It's like asking if 6 cups of a beverage is too much to drink each day. Different alk products have different potencies and different tendencies to cause precipitation of calcium carbonate.

By far the best way to ask such a question is to provided the alk dosed per day in dKH per day (using a calculator if you need to), but second best is to provide mL per day and name of the product, forcing readers to pull up a calculator and convert it to dKH per day to assess whether it is excessive or not, and by how much
 

Waters

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horrible. one of the worst decisions i made was to put a sand bed in the tank
Maybe others can pop in and explain the chemistry of it and how to stop (or at least slow it down). I have had it happen to every substrate tank I have had to some degree.
 

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Never had this happen in my tank. Alk consumption was zero until I added coral that consumed it...

My sand is normal over all the tank, and my goby keeps it stirred up.
 
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