Hello friends,
I may be stressing about an issue, which may not be an issue, but it's been ongoing for some time and it just doesn't feel right.
My dosing of calcium and alkalinity are imbalanced by quite a considerable amount (40% less), when they should be balanced, or at least very close.
I feel this is wrong, I've been told "it's ok, it'll sort itself out" etc, but it's not correcting itself, and the question I keep coming back to is if I were running a calcium reactor, it would be perfectly balanced by default and I would have no ability to tweak the relative amounts dosed.
On that basis alone, I feel something is wrong and I should be doing something to correct this situation.
A summary of my tank and general stuff:
40% less Ca over everything else doesn't seem right at all, and to the main point of my concern, if I were running a calcium reactor, I wouldn't have the ability to tweak the numbers, so surely that must mean something is wrong.
This isn't just a bad batch of Triton, this is my second batch and the issue is the same.
I feel like I maybe need to up my Alk, which in theory should reduce my Ca, then I can correct my Ca dosing to be in line.
I dunno, but something feels very wrong.
Please help
I may be stressing about an issue, which may not be an issue, but it's been ongoing for some time and it just doesn't feel right.
My dosing of calcium and alkalinity are imbalanced by quite a considerable amount (40% less), when they should be balanced, or at least very close.
I feel this is wrong, I've been told "it's ok, it'll sort itself out" etc, but it's not correcting itself, and the question I keep coming back to is if I were running a calcium reactor, it would be perfectly balanced by default and I would have no ability to tweak the relative amounts dosed.
On that basis alone, I feel something is wrong and I should be doing something to correct this situation.
A summary of my tank and general stuff:
- Triton Core 7 'Other Methods'
- 200L tank, which is now 9 months old
- 9 Acro larger frags (1-3 inch), 2 Monti frags, 2 Micromussa
- 5 fish (clowns, kole tang, couple of wrasse)
- Live rock, bare bottom
- Siporax in sump
- Currently dosing Tropic Marin NP Bacto-Balance
- ICP tests done every couple of weeks
- CO2 Scrubber, 2 x Nero 5's, skimmer
- Carbon every couple of weeks for 3 days
- Bi-weekly water change of ~20%
- Ca: ~450
- Mg: ~1410
- Alk: ~8
- PO4: ~0.03
- NO3: ~1.5
- PH: 8.13 - 8.32
- Triton 1, 3a & 3b (Mg & Alk): 3ml per day, dosed as 0.5ml 6 times per day
- Triton 2 (Ca): 1.8ml per day, dosed as 0.3ml 6 times per day
40% less Ca over everything else doesn't seem right at all, and to the main point of my concern, if I were running a calcium reactor, I wouldn't have the ability to tweak the numbers, so surely that must mean something is wrong.
This isn't just a bad batch of Triton, this is my second batch and the issue is the same.
I feel like I maybe need to up my Alk, which in theory should reduce my Ca, then I can correct my Ca dosing to be in line.
I dunno, but something feels very wrong.
Please help
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