High alk consumption in 2 month old tank.

Reef_prop88

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Hopefully this topic hasn't been beaten to death but I feel like my alkalinity consumption is high for a 2 month old 29 gallon tank with about 10 lps corals and a couple mushrooms/zoas. I have gotten to the point today where I had to dose 38 ml of red sea kh/alk and it seems to change almost daily. The tanks ph is pegged at about 8.4 and all other parameters are looking good except for my nitrates that are about 30-40ppm. Is there something I am missing here or is this normal alk consumption for happy corals and coralline algae? As always thanks for the help!
 

Spare time

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Sounds like you have a happy tank :)


The only thing I can think of is that some of it could be precipitating if you dose a lot at one time or pour it in rapidly. However, 10 LPS in a 29 gallon sounds like a pretty heavly stocked tank (depending on the size of them), and I can see that along with coralline sucking up a lot of alk.
 

Randy Holmes-Farley

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Hopefully this topic hasn't been beaten to death but I feel like my alkalinity consumption is high for a 2 month old 29 gallon tank with about 10 lps corals and a couple mushrooms/zoas. I have gotten to the point today where I had to dose 38 ml of red sea kh/alk and it seems to change almost daily. The tanks ph is pegged at about 8.4 and all other parameters are looking good except for my nitrates that are about 30-40ppm. Is there something I am missing here or is this normal alk consumption for happy corals and coralline algae? As always thanks for the help!

Oddly, you say you have to dose a lot, but are not indicating what the alkalinity is.

What is it?

You are not dosing it just to maintain pH, are you?
 

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