I got a Apex and Trident because I'm really bad at testing manually. I really want a very stable mixed reef. I thought all my levels were good, but I was not really seeing coral growth and some of my corals seems to struggle. I was told by a local LFS that it was probably the "black box" led lights, so I got a Seneye and did a days worth of par and per reading and graphed the spectrum's, watched a bunch of You Tube videos and decided I would look at water chemistry a bit closer. I took my water to a local LFS and had it tested and they told me it was perfect, in fact more perfect than I had tested. My testing procedure was 3 tests of each PH, Alk, Calc on two different tests (6 total test) tossing out the outliers and averaging. (Yes I have lots of time on my hands). I couldn't get any salinity devices to agree and found that digital salinity meters (including Apex) work by conductivity different from refractometers. That was half a day. I've gone with the Apex and a backup digital handheld bot calibrated identically. I will add a secondary salinity probe to the Apex soon.
All this is to ask: I am now dosing 4800 ml of Kalkwasser mixed at 2 tsp per gallon per day on a 24 hour schedule to maintain a ~8.07 PH and can not maintain either ALK or CA. The Trident read a CA of 308, which took almost a 3/4 gallon of BRS Calcium to raise to 422, but is falling by 10 per day unless I add 100ml every day. During that time ALK fell from 9.8 to 8.85 and I can not maintain it at 9 to 9.1 unless I add 100ml per day.
I estimate I have about 150 gallons of water volume and I do 10-15 gallons of water change every week.
I am having trouble keeping the salinity in check.
It seems like I am using a huge amount of dosing. I do have a lot of coralline algae growing. I don't have a lot of coral. ~35 SPS frags and some LPS frags and some Zoas. I don't see any precipitation.
Any thoughts?
All this is to ask: I am now dosing 4800 ml of Kalkwasser mixed at 2 tsp per gallon per day on a 24 hour schedule to maintain a ~8.07 PH and can not maintain either ALK or CA. The Trident read a CA of 308, which took almost a 3/4 gallon of BRS Calcium to raise to 422, but is falling by 10 per day unless I add 100ml every day. During that time ALK fell from 9.8 to 8.85 and I can not maintain it at 9 to 9.1 unless I add 100ml per day.
I estimate I have about 150 gallons of water volume and I do 10-15 gallons of water change every week.
I am having trouble keeping the salinity in check.
It seems like I am using a huge amount of dosing. I do have a lot of coralline algae growing. I don't have a lot of coral. ~35 SPS frags and some LPS frags and some Zoas. I don't see any precipitation.
Any thoughts?