High Alk Mystery

KenO

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So I have 2 tank setups:
Tank 1: 45 gallon cube and a 40 gallon breeder tied into a 40 breeder sump. (95 gallons of water total)
45 gallon has been running for 3+ years. The 40 breeder and 40 breeder sump running for just over a year. For this setup I dose Alk, Cal and Mg. The 45 cube and 40 breeder have reef flakes sand.
Parameters:
S.G. - 1.026
Alk - 8.0
Cal - 458
Mg - 1360
pH - 7.92
Temp - 79
AWC - 1.5 gpd

Tank 2: 9 gallon nano tank with a 10 gallon sump. This setup has been running since mid-April. I started this setup with 20lbs of LR from KP Aquatics. Most of it is in the sump. I'm working on a couple of larger tank setups and I want to use this LR to seed new tanks. This setup also uses reef flake sand about an inch on the bottom of the nano tank (12"x12"). I do not dose anything in this setup. LR is heavily covered in coralline and the coralline is spreading to a few small pieces of rock rubble I have in the tank. The corals (no SPS) are doing fine. Initially when I moved them from the other tanks, they didn't look too happy, but they have adjusted to the new parameters and different light.
Parameters:
S.G. - 1.026
Alk - 10.6
Cal - 480
Mg - 1400
pH - 7.73
Temp - 79
Weekly water changes 50%. I drain the sump almost to the bottom and refill.

I'm using the standard Tropic Marin Salt not the pro, in both tanks. I mix overnight before using in the nano setup. The other setup has the AWC.

Mixed saltwater ALK measures 8.5 dkH.

So my question is why is the ALK level in the nano setup so high and it will increase slightly as the week progresses. It will go from 10.2 to 10.8 over a weeks time. The weekly water changes are not lowering the ALK level as expected.
 
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DMG Reef

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I wonder if it might be the reef flakes sand. There was another thread about a month ago with this same issue and that person also used the reef flakes sand.

I looked at the advertising for the sand and it states "massive buffering capacity". I realize that you have the sand in the older tank as well but maybe since that system has been running for much longer, it's lost some of the buffering ability whereas the new tank hasn't yet.

Just a thought since the previous thread didn't come up with an answer for this issue.
 
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KenO

KenO

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Interesting. I guess overtime as the sand ages, the buffering should decrease.
 

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