How often do you tweak your alk dosing?

[hllb]

I have a 32g biocube mixed reef. I’ve been dosing alk and cal for almost 2 months now. The dose for calcium was pretty easy to get right but alk doesn’t seem to be as easy.
I started at 5 ml daily (Red Sea foundation liquid). A couple of weeks later I upped it to 7.4 ml per day. I’m pretty sure I upped it a bit after that too though I didn’t track it. Alk was getting too high so I reduced it on 12/13 to 7 ml per day. The alk has gone up slightly since then (alk was 9.8 today - I’m trying to keep it at 9.0).

is this normal? Is this something I need to continually tweak? When dosing, when is the best time to test? I’m currently dosing 3 times a day. For now, I dropped my dosing to 5.9 ml a day to hopefully slowly bring my alk down. Once I get it back to 9, I can tweak the dosing again.

 

[cloak]

How often do you do water changes? Maybe stop dosing and find a baseline with the water changes? Sometimes the best thing is nothing at all. Keep up with the water changes though. (if need be) Develop a routine and go from there. Stability is key. GL.

 

[hllb]

How often do you do water changes? Maybe stop dosing and find a baseline with the water changes? Sometimes the best thing is nothing at all. Keep up with the water changes though. Develop a routine and go from there. GL. (stability)

I have been doing wc’s once a month (due to low nutrients) but plan to step that up to every other week now that my nutrients are where I want them (nitrates 5, po4 .035). My water mixes to alk of 9 though so shouldn’t affect my dosing once I get it straightened out. Last Sunday alk went from 9.7 to 9.6 after a 4 or 5 g wc.

 

[hllb]

Bumping for other feedback

 

[Crustaceon]

Lower your alk dose until you see a slow drop in overall alkalinity. Leave it alone for a month and see where it stops. If it stops at 7dkh, great. Give the dose a VERY slight increase and wait another month.

 

[92Miata]

The big thing to remember is that alk tests have a bit of variance, and alk varies over the day - so you shouldn't really be making adjustments with single day measurements. Measure every day at the same time for a week or so, and then adjust the dose. Specific time doesn't matter - but tests should all be roughly the same time of day.

Looking through my notes, I started dosing 5ml of Randy's 2-part on 6/17, was up to 10ml by 7/1, 15 ml on 8/1, then some poor documentation,then up to 25ml on 10/1. I'm doing almost 50ml a day now.

I check anywhere from every day to every 3-4 days normally, but if I make any sort of adjustment, I do daily checks for a week so I can make sure I didn't bungle a calculation or anything. At the end of the week I go - Oh, I started at 8.3 and ended up at 7.6, so that means I'm losing .7dkh, which works out to ~35ml, which means I need to add another
5ml per day, then I adjust my alk to where I want it to be (7.6->8) and then repeat the process for another week.

You've got less stonies than me, and more zoos, but I only run 8dkh - so I'd expect a little slower rate - but the same sort of pattern. As corals get bigger, they'll grow faster, and use more stuff -so this doesn't really end until you physically run out of space.

If you do see a significant decline in usage - its a sign that something is going on, and corals aren't growing.

 

[hllb]

The big thing to remember is that alk tests have a bit of variance, and alk varies over the day - so you shouldn't really be making adjustments with single day measurements. Measure every day at the same time for a week or so, and then adjust the dose. Specific time doesn't matter - but tests should all be roughly the same time of day.

Looking through my notes, I started dosing 5ml of Randy's 2-part on 6/17, was up to 10ml by 7/1, 15 ml on 8/1, then some poor documentation,then up to 25ml on 10/1. I'm doing almost 50ml a day now.

I check anywhere from every day to every 3-4 days normally, but if I make any sort of adjustment, I do daily checks for a week so I can make sure I didn't bungle a calculation or anything. At the end of the week I go - Oh, I started at 8.3 and ended up at 7.6, so that means I'm losing .7dkh, which works out to ~35ml, which means I need to add another
5ml per day, then I adjust my alk to where I want it to be (7.6->8) and then repeat the process for another week.

You've got less stonies than me, and more zoos, but I only run 8dkh - so I'd expect a little slower rate - but the same sort of pattern. As corals get bigger, they'll grow faster, and use more stuff -so this doesn't really end until you physically run out of space.

If you do see a significant decline in usage - its a sign that something is going on, and corals aren't growing.

That's helpful, thanks. I normally test twice a week and you're right, I shouldn't make significant changes based on a single test. I thought I had it straightened out, but then my usage did seem to drop, which I didn't expect. Everything seems to be doing well. The only changes I made was to dose some neonitro to bring my nitrates up a bit (they were barely hanging on at 1). I've got them at 5 now (only dosed neonitro twice, over a two week period). Otherwise, no real changes in the tank.

 

[blasterman]

I will say it again.....alk consumption in a tank, especially if it's less than a year old and not dominated by fast growing SPS will vary all over the place. Smaller tanks make the issue crazier because they have less volume to buffer.

I would reduce your testing to twice a week. Just divide the number of days alk dropped to get a rough daily average of what's used and tweak accordingly. Do not exceed 9dkh if you can avoid it....that monti cap won't like it. You do not need to test 3x a day or dose 3x a day. Dose once a day is fine.

 

[hllb]

I will say it again.....alk consumption in a tank, especially if it's less than a year old and not dominated by fast growing SPS will vary all over the place. Smaller tanks make the issue crazier because they have less volume to buffer.

I would reduce your testing to twice a week. Just divide the number of days alk dropped to get a rough daily average of what's used and tweak accordingly. Do not exceed 9dkh if you can avoid it....that monti cap won't like it. You do not need to test 3x a day or dose 3x a day. Dose once a day is fine.

I test twice a week - Sundays and Wednesday, and I did set up my dosing based on weekly averages. And then it seems to have changed and drove my alk up. I've recalibrated my pump once during the two months (didn't seem to need it). I have never tested 3 times a day. I prefer to dose three times a day so it doesn't raise alkalinity too much in one go. First dose is while lights are off and is lower, other two are when lights are on and slightly higher.

My monit is a mystic sunset, encrusting. But I do find it interesting that it's both encrusting and kind of starting to grow like a cap. That was an unrequested freebie frag I got long before I should have had SPS. It's a tough thing and seems impossible to kill LOL.