Kalk stirrer not keeping up with Alk suddenly

[Flatlandreefer]

I am using an avast marine kalk stirrer on a roughly 250g system. Everything was dialed in and had been steady for a while adding around 2000 ml/day. Over the course of a week or so either Alk demand suddenly increased or there is something odd going on with my Kalk system. Usually try to keep alk around 8.3, it has plummeted down to 6.9 and I can't seem to get it above 7. I am up to 8000 ml/day with 2 cups of kalk in the reactor.

Is there any reason the reactor would lose its effectiveness? I add fresh kalk every two weeks and completely clean every month.

 

[arking_mark]

How old is the tank? What are you growing?

Assuming a 1% evaporation rate, you can dose saturated kalkwasser to about 9500ml. This will replace roughly 1dKH worth of Alk and a balanced amount of Ca.

Kalk stirrers have been known to sometimes make weaker than saturated kalkwasser.

Many mature tanks consume between 0.5 and 4.5 dKH worth of Alk per day due to abiotic precipitation and biological consumption. So kalkwasser often isn't enough to keep up with demand.

 

[Flatlandreefer]

Two tanks in one system. A 150 frag tank, a nano and a large sump. Frag tank is sps so it is the alk sucker, it was only half lit up until a few months ago when i lit the other side. Additional frags were fragged from the original half so not like I added a bunch of new stuff.

Anyway, my concern is that all of a sudden my reactor wasn't keeping up even by upping the dose 3x, obviously this could be a sudden increase in coral growth but seems like a quick change.

 

[brmc1985]

Two tanks in one system. A 150 frag tank, a nano and a large sump. Frag tank is sps so it is the alk sucker, it was only half lit up until a few months ago when i lit the other side. Additional frags were fragged from the original half so not like I added a bunch of new stuff.

Anyway, my concern is that all of a sudden my reactor wasn't keeping up even by upping the dose 3x, obviously this could be a sudden increase in coral growth but seems like a quick change.

Switch to a two part solution. Sounds like your tank is using more than kalk can keep up with