How bad is 24 Alk?

[PotatoPig]

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…

 

[Lavey29]

And you still have SPS alive?

 

[PotatoPig]

And you still have SPS alive?

For some reason autocorrect borked “soft” to “SPS”. The tank is only a soft coral tank so far, just added an LPS today.

 

[InsaneClownFish]

Keep in mind you're raising alk as you're raising your salinity, but I don't think it could have been just that. It definitely sounds like something wrong with the store's home brew. Did you ask them how to use it? I know I had something similar happen a few years back because I started using the bulk version of my preferred two part. The bulk version requires you to dilute it with rodi water- that could be most of your problem right there- or if the store is using a similar product and calling it their brew...well...

24 is very high...lower it with water changes slowly. Keep an eye on your calc as well, and don't overdue the alk just to bring calc up. If it's just LPS you don't need to go nuts with either- hope this helps.

 

[TangerineSpeedo]

It would seem at that level the Alk would precipitate out. Not a chemist though. I did at one time use Imaginerium (Petco) water for a 6g nano and the buffers they used in that brought my Alk to 14 but that was as high as I ever saw.
Water change time.. moderately.

 

[PotatoPig]

It definitely sounds like something wrong with the store's home brew. Did you ask them how to use it?

I’m fairly confident the issue was they filled the wrong bottle - so I thought I was adding Calcium but was adding Alk. Directions were a quantity and to add to a high flow area - so I added half that quantity (to take it slow on a new thing) right in front of a power head. Just kept adding it each day because the Calcium is wasn’t moving…

It would seem at that level the Alk would precipitate out. Not a chemist though. I did at one time use Imaginerium (Petco) water for a 6g nano and the buffers they used in that brought my Alk to 14 but that was as high as I ever saw.
Water change time.. moderately.

On the last time I added it it did precipitate put - I noticed a little white cloud in the jet as I put it in. I mis attributed this to being calcium precipitating out and that being why it wasn’t raising my calcium.

So I guess as a benchmark - alk apparently maxes out somewhere around 24.

Guess I have some regular water changes in the next few days.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I’d either wait it out, or do water changes with a low alk mix. If this tank is more than a nano, I’d lower the alk in the new salt water extra low first as it will take a lot of salt water.

Try the kit in new salt water to be sure it is not kit error.

 

[ptrahan]

The white cloud when you add alk is normal if it dissolves fairly quickly.

Easy to make your own additives with Randy’s (thanks, sir!) recipes for calcium, alkalinity and magnesium.

Search this phrase:

An Improved Do-it-Yourself Two-Part Calcium and Alkalinity Supplement System​

 

[PotatoPig]

The white cloud when you add alk is normal if it dissolves fairly quickly.

Easy to make your own additives with Randy’s (thanks, sir!) recipes for calcium, alkalinity and magnesium.

Search this phrase:

​

An Improved Do-it-Yourself Two-Part Calcium and Alkalinity Supplement System​

That is a shockingly simple recipe. I’d always assumed these products were hard to make. Thank you for bringing this to my attention, and thank you Randy for producing it!