IDENTIFYING CONSUMPTION

[chedog83]

Good mood morning,

I have had my mixed reef 72g bowfront going about seven months now. Since April I have been testing daily and recording the data to track fluctuations in my alk and cal so when I got my doser I would have a real understanding of the consumption.
I have run into a handful of spurts where the alk will fluctuate from the normal 8.4 down to 7.8 up to the highest it’s been 9.3. Is this range acceptable? As it rises should I be skipping days of dosing till it drops back down?

also.. if I use ocean water from my lfs and want to do a water change this also slightly drops my alk. Should I be dosing immediately after those water changes to bring up to the normal 8.4dkh?

 

[blaxsun]

Alkalinity will tend to fluctuate during the day, and yes - anything between 7-11 dKH is an acceptable range. Generally you want to determine a target range and dose to try and maintain this. For me, this means dosing more during the day and less at night to maintain smaller swings.

Yes, when you do water changes you can dose alkalinity after to try to minimize the variance,