I have a 165 gallon Bowfront tank that has been running for >16 years as mostly FOWLR but I now think I have it reef ready: water changes and salt additions have brought the Salinity to 35-36, pH is now 8-8.15 after setting up outside skimmer air intake.
Calcium started really high (close to 500 on Salifert, now trending on Triton 460-475) likely from a bunch of gradual addition of concentrated salt added a month ago to get salinity from 28 to 35-36.
I set up a Trident and am seeing Alk drop pretty steadily yet my Ca, which started quite high, still staying relatively flat. Confounding this is a bit of Kalkwasser I put into the ATO line (a few tablespoons in an old Tunze kalkwasser in-line dosing container - I have now stopped adding more).
I calibrated the Triton and alk has been going down linearly from 10 to 8.4 over the week (aprox 0.3 per day). The Trident seems to measure about o.5 dkh lower than Hanna checker but regardless the trend is steadily downward.
The tank has only 4 small frags (acan, cyphastrea, 2 favia) but lots of old existing rock with patches of coralline algae.
Last night I just started adding small amounts (~ 30 ml) of BRS Soda ash for the Alk to keep it closer to 8.5-9 per Ryan’s suggested ‘starter’ alk from a BRS video I saw. It’s being trickled over 24h via a DOS pump and Trident controlled dosing. Alk stayed about 8.4 since yesterday, so far less than 24h of dosing.
So, question: I see alk dropping steadily but not so much calcium. I thought these would be more linearly linked but since there are only 4 frags, could it be something else (? Coralline algae?)? Or is there something off in my testing? Or is it just that my tank still needs time to reach steady state?
I set up a Trident and am seeing Alk drop pretty steadily yet my Ca, which started quite high, still staying relatively flat. Confounding this is a bit of Kalkwasser I put into the ATO line (a few tablespoons in an old Tunze kalkwasser in-line dosing container - I have now stopped adding more).
I calibrated the Triton and alk has been going down linearly from 10 to 8.4 over the week (aprox 0.3 per day). The Trident seems to measure about o.5 dkh lower than Hanna checker but regardless the trend is steadily downward.
The tank has only 4 small frags (acan, cyphastrea, 2 favia) but lots of old existing rock with patches of coralline algae.
Last night I just started adding small amounts (~ 30 ml) of BRS Soda ash for the Alk to keep it closer to 8.5-9 per Ryan’s suggested ‘starter’ alk from a BRS video I saw. It’s being trickled over 24h via a DOS pump and Trident controlled dosing. Alk stayed about 8.4 since yesterday, so far less than 24h of dosing.
So, question: I see alk dropping steadily but not so much calcium. I thought these would be more linearly linked but since there are only 4 frags, could it be something else (? Coralline algae?)? Or is there something off in my testing? Or is it just that my tank still needs time to reach steady state?
