Huge Alk Drop, Bring up Slow or Fast? All Zoa Tank

[SqueezyLemon]

Okay guys I appreciate everyone’s help but I really don’t know what’s going on... not sure how to safely raise the Alk and maintain it at a level. I’m a little baffled! The tank is 95% zoa no sps!

I’m going to break it down from the first Water Test I did where I noticed Alk way down:

9.21.20



Specific Gravity: 1.021

PH: 8.3

Phosphates: 0.5

KH/Alk: 5.4

Nitrates: 5-10

Calcium 450

Magnesium 1200



Did a 15 gallon water change and 35ml of Kent’s ProBuffer dKH



9.23.2020

KH/Alk: 7.5

Specific Gravity: 1.022



Huge rise which scared me I did too much, everything looked fine to me other than the scrambled eggs like on day 1. But I only did 20 ml of Kent’s ProBuffer dKH.



9.24.2020

KH/Alk:7.0 Double Checked

Calcium 480

Specific Gravity: 1.022



Alk went back down and I double checked it this time. Also rechecked calcium. This time in addition to the scrambled eggs my Jawbreaker mushroom colony mushrooms shrunk as well. I added 20 ml of ProBuffer dKH again. Not sure how to progress and if I should keep dosing the recommended 35ml per day?



Total water capacity in my tank is approx 140 gallons.



Weekly dosing:

21ml Kent’s Coral Vite

21ml Kent’s Coral Accel

14 ml Kent’s Essential Elements

7ml Kent’s Tech M Magnesium (looks like my dosing pump is broken because the bottle was overflowing. I think it was pulling in 7ml a week instead of dosing)



Tank Inhabitants:

Yellow Tang

Clownfish

Green Chromis

Tomini tang

Cleaner Shrimp

4 peppermint shrimp

80lbs live rock

80lbs sand

4 heads torch

80 head Duncan

3” micromussa colony

30 jawbreaker and bounce mushrooms

Probably 1000s of zoa polyps

skimmer: Reef Octopus 1000SSS