High Alkalinity Consumption
- Thread starter aggrofish
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This is why I mentioned about the hanna..I was using the hanna to set my kh keeper and the results were vastly off. I emailed them to later find the hanna was off significantly. Again like you stated changed the reagent And it was better. I use titration checking now and occasionally the hanna to see if any are miles off. Worth checking before anything
aggrofish
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My previous tank(s) never had issues with precipitation, using the same salt, same products. I'm definitely going to triple check results, but with my heater getting caked in white, along with my return pump, and clumps of sand turning to rock I'm pretty confident there's an issue. For all I know, maybe the test results are wrong and the Alkalinity is sky high? I'll test tonight.
The one thing that is different is I moved my tank from my house to conference room about 6 months ago. The PH runs higher here. I'd have to crack windows open at the old location and the PH ran around 8. Here it runs 8.1 - 8.3. I stopped all dosing to see what affect that has on PH and Im going to pick up some BRS bicarbonate.
aggrofish
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Update: Stopped dosing everything as suggested. Starting point was 8.6 tested every 24 hours at the same time.
8.6->7.6->7.2->6.7 I turned back on the doser do account for a .5 DKH drop daily. I brought alk up to 7.2 and will slowly bring it back up. Interestingly enough prior to stopping for 3 days I was dosing 55ml or red sea Alk daily. Every 5ml in my tank is a .10 increase. Before when I put the Alk in a high flow area it pretty much became snow. now the cloudiness goes away instantly and no flakes. Hopefully it's fixed. Thanks for the help
Edit to add: My PH didnt change at all when I stopped dosing nor did it change when I added 25ml of alkalinity so I'm guessing my issue wasnt carbonate/bicarbonate related. I did pick up some BRS bicarbonate in case the red sea stuff was causing spikes.
8.6->7.6->7.2->6.7 I turned back on the doser do account for a .5 DKH drop daily. I brought alk up to 7.2 and will slowly bring it back up. Interestingly enough prior to stopping for 3 days I was dosing 55ml or red sea Alk daily. Every 5ml in my tank is a .10 increase. Before when I put the Alk in a high flow area it pretty much became snow. now the cloudiness goes away instantly and no flakes. Hopefully it's fixed. Thanks for the help
Edit to add: My PH didnt change at all when I stopped dosing nor did it change when I added 25ml of alkalinity so I'm guessing my issue wasnt carbonate/bicarbonate related. I did pick up some BRS bicarbonate in case the red sea stuff was causing spikes.
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aggrofish
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Yes I was doing 2 part. I had them set to a different schedule and I was doing 1/2 the amount of calcium and it was still too much. It was 500+ I think the ratio is closer to 1:3
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Not sure what you mean by that. Precipitaiton is always driven by alkalinity in some fashion.
aggrofish
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You had suggested that the precipitation may be related to the carbonate alkalinity may be causing a rise in PH. When I stopped dosing my PH didnt change. When I dose 8-12 times throughout the day it's not causing PH to spike. What I did find however, is that a bigger dose does indeed spike the PH. So what I've been doing is using the BRS sodium bicarbonate to increase DKH and continuing to use the red sea (carbonate) to maintain. I hope that makes sense
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