danbecerra
New Member
Hi, sharing some learning, looking back I guess I did not do my homework to really think how to dose correctly...
So here is the story... I had an unstable tank as my couple LPS (2 hammers, one with 2 heads, another with 4 heads), coraline algae and couple SPS ( montipora and leptoseris small frags) were starting to demand Alk and calcium ,and magnesium, and I was dosing irregularly every 2/3 days manually, then I decided I needed automated dosing, so acquired a dosing pump.
I started a daily measurement to get daily consumption and got 0.5 dKH per day, programmed pump to start on a 6ml dose of DIY baked soda bicarbonate solution, along with calcium chloride solution, after a few days of measuring I saw I was going down by 0.25 dKH so I doubled dosing, now it was 12ml...
After a few days I was still going down by 0.1dKH and increased dosing to 15ml...
It looked fine for some days and then I was going down by 0.15 dKH
At this point I started to get confused, is my tank increasing consumption? I raised dosing to 18ml...
Then I failed to measure daily... Few days later a hammer head had melted, realized this after returning home from work, got a little into panic and did a water change late at night of about 20% sucking up the dissolved coral and surrounding areas trying to avoid Brown Jelly Disease propagation... Couple days later other hammers looked unhappy and I measured parameters, dKH was down to 6.5 , I could not understand why, I had increased dosing ...
After checking carefully dosing pump, I realized it stopped dosing, not because the pump failed, no , pump was working fine, but because the hose tube was completely blocked by calcium carbonate inside, missed to catch this because the hose was not transparent, it was opaque, and the BIG mistake I had made was to let a portion of this dosing hose tube submerged in the sump, It didn't cross my mind previously that I should not let it get submerged , that the alk solution should drop into the sump .. I don't recall seeing instructions about this, but again I did not do my homework, was more focused on other stuff like calculating and calibrating ...
I've reset my measurements and trying to figure out correct consumption, my initial 18ml dosing is now slowly raising Alk being dosed the right way ( dripping, hose not submerged) but that is ok until I get back up to around 8.5 dKH target, then will reduce dosing and see where I end up...
Hammer corals still look unhappy but I guess it'll take some time with stability to recover...
Will update later with some tank pictures and final dosing....
So here is the story... I had an unstable tank as my couple LPS (2 hammers, one with 2 heads, another with 4 heads), coraline algae and couple SPS ( montipora and leptoseris small frags) were starting to demand Alk and calcium ,and magnesium, and I was dosing irregularly every 2/3 days manually, then I decided I needed automated dosing, so acquired a dosing pump.
I started a daily measurement to get daily consumption and got 0.5 dKH per day, programmed pump to start on a 6ml dose of DIY baked soda bicarbonate solution, along with calcium chloride solution, after a few days of measuring I saw I was going down by 0.25 dKH so I doubled dosing, now it was 12ml...
After a few days I was still going down by 0.1dKH and increased dosing to 15ml...
It looked fine for some days and then I was going down by 0.15 dKH
At this point I started to get confused, is my tank increasing consumption? I raised dosing to 18ml...
Then I failed to measure daily... Few days later a hammer head had melted, realized this after returning home from work, got a little into panic and did a water change late at night of about 20% sucking up the dissolved coral and surrounding areas trying to avoid Brown Jelly Disease propagation... Couple days later other hammers looked unhappy and I measured parameters, dKH was down to 6.5 , I could not understand why, I had increased dosing ...
After checking carefully dosing pump, I realized it stopped dosing, not because the pump failed, no , pump was working fine, but because the hose tube was completely blocked by calcium carbonate inside, missed to catch this because the hose was not transparent, it was opaque, and the BIG mistake I had made was to let a portion of this dosing hose tube submerged in the sump, It didn't cross my mind previously that I should not let it get submerged , that the alk solution should drop into the sump .. I don't recall seeing instructions about this, but again I did not do my homework, was more focused on other stuff like calculating and calibrating ...
I've reset my measurements and trying to figure out correct consumption, my initial 18ml dosing is now slowly raising Alk being dosed the right way ( dripping, hose not submerged) but that is ok until I get back up to around 8.5 dKH target, then will reduce dosing and see where I end up...
Hammer corals still look unhappy but I guess it'll take some time with stability to recover...
Will update later with some tank pictures and final dosing....
