Is this normal?

[Notsolostfish]

My tank is 150G. 2 years old. Been dosing all for reef since 2 years ago. Lately iv been increasing my all for reef im at 95ml. Its 150G total water volume. My calcium was stable for the most part with the magnesium. Not a huge drop 390-410. But my alk kept dropping from 8.1 alk to 7.5. Whats the best course of action here adding seperate alk additive like tropic marin recommend? Or follow randy holmes advice for adjusting alk to where i want it back, and then raise my afr? And calcium will catch up? I checked similar tanks my size, and load and its 70-80ml is 95ml a day out of the ordinary?

 

[liddojunior]

If you don’t want the other parameters to change. Dose the Alk to the range you want.

All for reef has the issue that consumption is not a fixed ratio for every tank. And while it’s close at some point you will have to supplement with Alk dosing so that you can maintain your Alk.

If I recall correctly the instructions for AFR also recommend doing adjustments as needed overtime. Which I assume means to adjust individual dosing to match your needs

 

[Notsolostfish]

If you don’t want the other parameters to change. Dose the Alk to the range you want.

All for reef has the issue that consumption is not a fixed ratio for every tank. And while it’s close at some point you will have to supplement with Alk dosing so that you can maintain your Alk.

If I recall correctly the instructions for AFR also recommend doing adjustments as needed overtime. Which I assume means to adjust individual dosing to match your needs

I dont mine mag and calc, to go up a little bit doesnt hurt me im at 390-410 and honesty its not that much if it went up a little bit same for mag. Its just im checking other people usage. And they are looking at me as im dosing out of control amounts and it starting to worry me. I do awc with tropic marin pro salt as well. Started like 4-5 days ago. But i dont know to be honest. My tank is not heavy sps dominant

 

[Rhetoric]

I just increase my All for Reef dose amount until it goes back up. The calc and mag will not go up much and won't be a problem.

 

[Rhetoric]

I checked similar tanks my size, and load and its 70-80ml is 95ml a day out of the ordinary?

Consumption rate has nothing to do with tank size, it's Consumption based in demand. My little 20 gallon gets 23mls a day.

 

[Notsolostfish]

Consumption rate has nothing to do with tank size, it's Consumption based in demand. My little 20 gallon gets 23mls a day.

But i wonder whats actually demanding in my tank. I do have few colonies, some sps colonies, and 1 big growing monti. I wonder what its but not anything heavy like sps dominant

 

[liddojunior]

But i wonder whats actually demanding in my tank. I do have few colonies, some sps colonies, and 1 big growing monti. I wonder what its but not anything heavy like sps dominant

Colonies. Look at the coraline. Everything consumes. My tank consumes 1.2 Alk a day which is normal. And some people have tanks that consume even more. At some point consumption is high enough that people move to calcium reactors and Kalk in order to dose high amounts.

And Alk isn’t just used by corals. It’s our saltwater buffer capacity. pH needs to be maintained at the right amount in order for all the biological reactions to occur. Alk gets consumed to keep pH stable.

So things that drop Alk can be things like waste in the system. Fish poop, snails dying, crabs dying, excess food. As this decompose your Alk drops because decomposition is an acidic process. Another thing that can change is CO2 levels in your room and house. Spring releases lots of CO2 from the soil as it warms. So May and Sept has the highest amount of CO2. CO2 dissolving in water is acidic so using up Alk.

You might be fighting against a combination of things including your colony growth.

 

[danbecerra]

Hi, not meaning to diverge thread topic, jus thought my question fits here as well...
I have a 30 gallon, mostly soft coral, two hammer and 3 small frags of SPS (two leptoseris and 1 Montipora Setosa), some Coraline starting to grow, tank is almost 2 years old but SPS is new, about a month...
Only when I introduced SPS is that I started trying to dose with dosing pump, initially I measured KH and calcium (this one was under 350, don't know how much since salifert kit doesn't measure below), adjusted to around 9dKH and 390 ca, and measured daily. I saw consumption of 0.5 dkh daily, and initially started with 6 ml of Randy DIY recipe 2, with baked soda ash and calcium chloride solutions, after a week noticed I was still going down 0.25dKH daily, so increased dose to 12 ml daily, after some 5 days , I was still going down by 0.1 dKH then I increased dose to 15 ml daily, but to my surprise, 5 days later I was now going down by 0.15 dKH... How is this possible, is my tank increasing consumption that quickly? I now increased to 18 ml, yet to see if this will ve enough or I will still need to increase more... Any thoughts?