So….
My tank had low calcium (320 calcium, ALK 8) and I wanted to get it ready for a venture into LPS corals (currently Soft corals only).
Spoke with the LFS and they do a home brew 2 Part they use for their own tanks and sell at a very reasonable price. Decided to try it out.
They recommended a dose to raise calcium, I added half that dose, tested the next day. No change. Added the dose again. No change again. Tried again and no change. Once more. No change. Thought it was just precipitating out or something. Gave up. Stopped adding. Tank seems fine.
At this point I found the reason my calcium was low because my refractometer was off, so was running low salinity. Added salt over a couple weeks, got to 35ppt, calcium hit 400 on the nose. Great.
Added my first LPS today (torch).
Took parameters today as a baseline. Calcium came in at 400. ALK came in at 24!! Double checked. Definitely 24.
My suspicion (and if you’ve read this far I suspect you’re coming to the same conclusion) is the LFS botched their bottle fill and put ALK in the Calcium bottle.
So… on a scale of 1-24 how bad is this and what, if anything, should I do to fix it?
/also, lesson learned about testing all parameters…
My tank had low calcium (320 calcium, ALK 8) and I wanted to get it ready for a venture into LPS corals (currently Soft corals only).
Spoke with the LFS and they do a home brew 2 Part they use for their own tanks and sell at a very reasonable price. Decided to try it out.
They recommended a dose to raise calcium, I added half that dose, tested the next day. No change. Added the dose again. No change again. Tried again and no change. Once more. No change. Thought it was just precipitating out or something. Gave up. Stopped adding. Tank seems fine.
At this point I found the reason my calcium was low because my refractometer was off, so was running low salinity. Added salt over a couple weeks, got to 35ppt, calcium hit 400 on the nose. Great.
Added my first LPS today (torch).
Took parameters today as a baseline. Calcium came in at 400. ALK came in at 24!! Double checked. Definitely 24.
My suspicion (and if you’ve read this far I suspect you’re coming to the same conclusion) is the LFS botched their bottle fill and put ALK in the Calcium bottle.
So… on a scale of 1-24 how bad is this and what, if anything, should I do to fix it?
/also, lesson learned about testing all parameters…
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