Keeping alk/cal stable

[fishrambo]

Hi i am having trouble keeping my alk/cal stable I use redsea "coral pro salt" i dos both soda ash and calcium chloride. I have a red sea 625 xxl G2 which is 164 total volume tank and i do auto water change all threw the day "1 gallon a day" lighty stocked with 2 lps coral and a few fish for now my neptune does make it stable but it only gets unstable when i do a water change and yes my dosing is down stream from test ports any ideals or anyone else experince salt not being as advertised. I am using right at 200 ml of both a day to make up for the water changes. Thanks.

 

[fishyjoes]

A big tank with not much in it... Why dosing to begin with?
If you stopped dosing and water changes for a few days or a week, how do your parameters go?

 

[Salty_Northerner]

Why run the alk so high? And probably have better luck with the blue bucket. I used the black bucket and it was mixing at 13dkh and was a nightmare so I moved on to a better salt for myself which is way more stable.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

but it only gets unstable when i do a water change

Can you clarify what you mean by unstable (there is no scale on your graph) and what water changes you are referring to?

Changing 1 gallon per day all at once with a total volume of 164 gallons cannot lead to significant instability. Even if the salt mix had zero alk in it, a change of 1 gallon would only drop alk from 8.85 dKH to 8.80 dKH, which is not any sort of problem.

 

[fishrambo]

My thoughts exactly yes it’s just a 1 gallon a day I will post a graph to compare with later when I get home and what I mean by unstable is that my number’s seem to hold pretty decent until I do that water change.

 

[fishrambo]

In that case what does effect those parameters.

 

[fishrambo]

A big tank with not much in it... Why dosing to begin with?
If you stopped dosing and water changes for a few days or a week, how do your parameters go?

May give that a try

 

[fishrambo]

Why run the alk so high? And probably have better luck with the blue bucket. I used the black bucket and it was mixing at 13dkh and was a nightmare so I moved on to a better salt for myself which is way more stable.

To help with PH

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

In that case what does effect those parameters.

I cannot think of any way except test error that a less than 1% water change causes a measurable difference in alk, calcium, or magnesium, since none of those can be measured accurately to 1% precision with the methods we use.

 

[fishrambo]

I cannot think of any way except test error that a less than 1% water change causes a measurable difference in alk, calcium, or magnesium, since none of those can be measured accurately to 1% precision with the methods we use.

Yeah I’m thinking about getting a back up test kit and measure against the apex thanks for your input.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Let us know what you find. :)