Low alkalinity. Wits end.

[DipSpit]

Can you list all media and equipment in the system?

 

[re76]

So I am Late to this Alkalinity Party, but what if my Issue is the Opposite, I can't get my Reef under 15dkh. No matter how often (every 2 weeks) 1/4 water Change. Any proven products that can reduce at all? Any help is welcomed

What salt are you using? Reef Crystals and Red Sea Coral Pro have really high dkh.

 

[Joseph Pagnotta]

What salt are you using? Reef Crystals and Red Sea Coral Pro have really high dkh.

Nope I go Straight to My LFS and get Natural Sea water they pump from the ocean. .55 a gallon. Tanks been up and running since 2014

 

[van7271]

No disrespect to your question but some of you are so wound up over parameters and getting it perfect that you are taking all of the enjoyment out of the hobby. I have been in it for 10 plus years and when I look at my tank I ask is everyone alive and well today? Do you guys look like you are thriving? If the answer is yes well I am happy for another day. The point is look at the results. If they are good you must be doing something right. Trust me from experience you will never have everything perfect no matter how hard you try.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

So I am Late to this Alkalinity Party, but what if my Issue is the Opposite, I can't get my Reef under 15dkh. No matter how often (every 2 weeks) 1/4 water Change. Any proven products that can reduce at all? Any help is welcomed

I would suggest the same as for the op. Test fresh mixed salt water to help confirm. Then stop or reduce dosing.
Wc will lower the alk with a low alk salt , or just let the alk cal fall naturally.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Nope I go Straight to My LFS and get Natural Sea water they pump from the ocean. .55 a gallon. Tanks been up and running since 2014

So your NSW is around 7.5. Yes?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

So I am Late to this Alkalinity Party, but what if my Issue is the Opposite, I can't get my Reef under 15dkh. No matter how often (every 2 weeks) 1/4 water Change. Any proven products that can reduce at all? Any help is welcomed

What salt mix and type of top off water?

It probably is just what comes with your salt mix.

 

[Joseph Pagnotta]

What salt are you using? Reef Crystals and Red Sea Coral Pro have really high dkh.

Only water from my LFS. Pumped from the Ocean to their Tanks. I should say that I live In Palm Beach County Florida, so the water I have tested before putting into my tank directly from the Ocean.

 

[StevenS01]

No disrespect to your question but some of you are so wound up over parameters and getting it perfect that you are taking all of the enjoyment out of the hobby. I have been in it for 10 plus years and when I look at my tank I ask is everyone alive and well today? Do you guys look like you are thriving? If the answer is yes well I am happy for another day. The point is look at the results. If they are good you must be doing something right. Trust me from experience you will never have everything perfect no matter how hard you try.

I understand that worrying so much is indeed taking my enjoyment out yes, however I don’t want to push myself OUT of the hobby when I can’t maintain an alk above 7 and my calcium is off the chart.

 

[keithdoc]

Few things stand out:

1) What you dosing with? If you didn't calibrate your dosing pumps . . . . 2 of mine are 1.1ml/hr, the other is 1.6ml/hr
-make sure you calibrate your dosing pump (run each for 10 minutes back into a dosing cup - measure/divide by 10 = ml/hr)
-if you're dosing by hand, and having issues with Ca++ see #3, or Kh see #2.
-if dosing with pumps, calibrate them!!!!

2) Are you able to get the same Ca/Alk reading on the SAME sample 3 times in a row?
-make sure your reagents are not expired
-be meticulous in your measurement (no bubbles, align cuvette in same orientation, crystal smooth surface)

3) Do you see wild swings in Ca, and do you have the 0.1ml pipette kit?
-I got better at performing the test consistently, but still have issues with the Hanna Checker
-I am still unhappy with consistency of that Checker
-I've ordered the newer one (with fresh reagents) to ensure it's not my fault . . .

 

[rockstarta78]

Use this calculator and you can actually figure out how much you need to dose to reach your desire Cal/ALK level.

http://reef.diesyst.com/chemcalc/chemcalc.html

Once you reach the desired level (should be in 3-5 days), don't dose anything for 3 days. Test everyday to get an average usage of Cal/ALK. Once you have the total usage amount, you can use a doser to dose everyday to maintain stability. I think once you reach your target amount, everything else should be pretty simple. For the first few weeks I'd test ALK almost everyday or every other day.

 

[markalot]

So,

just stop testing calcium. Test Alk, dose 2 part based on Alk, it will work itself out. That's my advice. Only time to test Calcium is when you know something is wrong. I tested when I noticed the calcium part was not dosing at the same rate, pump was partially clogged. It was low but not horrible so I added a little extra calcium and haven't tested since. A few water changes never hurts either to help rebalance. All in my opinion, of course.

 

[James Johnson]

When I do that, I feel like I’m adding more alkalinity than I’m supposed to. A month ago I was up to 150 mL of Red Sea alkalinity additive a day, and I was BARELY above 7. The thing I’m worried about is that I’m going to fall into the pattern of dosing a bunch of alkalinity yet again.

Yes because you need more alkalinity, it's not just gonna stay at the level you raise it to it's constantly being used and as your corals grow they will need more and more. The bigger the coral the more alkalinity you need. Also stop using the Hanna calcium checking it uses such a small amount of sample water that even a couple drops in the wrong direction will result in a bad test, use salifert for calcium you will get much more consistent results

 

[RobertP]

What does your tank tell you? If it says dose more alk than calcium then do it. I havent dosed 2 part equally in many months and everything is happy.
Set a target alk preferably to match your water change. Much less work that way...then enjoy.

 

[JasPR]

So I’m starting to see why some people get out of the hobby. This is aggravating, so I’ll start from the beginning.

I’m going over my logs from the beginning of December, and I’m starting to realize my alkalinity issue has existed for a while. I will post my log at the end of this thread.

When January rolled around, I switched to using red seas foundation program, and for a while I was able to achieve alkalinity levels above 8 while maintaining normal calcium levels of around 427. I have always been pushing a little higher alkalinity so that I have that extra breathing room. Towards the middle of January, my alkalinity has been falling, around 5.9 to mid 6, although my calcium remained normal. Ever since then, I have been trying to raise my alkalinity, which lasts normally a day, and my calcium skyrockets to around 476-500.

Having trouble with balancing the Red Sea alkalinity and calcium ratio, I decided I was going to switch back to BRS 2 part. I switched three days ago when my calcium tested at 535, and alk was 5.8.

I did a 30% water change (consisting of some left over reef crystals and Red Sea coral pro). Post water change levels read 6.9/476/1260. At this point I added 2 part to raise my alk and mag, when I tested again at 10pm, alk/cal/mag read 7.3/467/1300.

Next day, my levels measure 6.5/467/1300. AT THIS POINT... I remember why I switched back to 2 part. When I first used it, I never dosed in equal amounts which is why I feel I was unsuccessful. After reading Randy’s article on low alk, high calcium, I figured “I need to dose in equal amounts.” So I dosed 8.6 for both solutions, which is the BRS recommended .2 mL per gallon (and what my dosers were set for). Later that evening, numbers measured out at 6.1/504/1350. Again, I added 2 part to correct the alkalinity to raise it 1.4 dKH (just Alk).
I also raised my doser amounts to 12 mL for both alk/cal, which dose at 12:00am and 2am.

This morning, my numbers read 6.3/600/1400.

I really don’t know what else to do. I have had two moments where I stop testing and evaluate my levels. The first time was early last year, and then I realized it took about 50mL of BRS 2 Part to keep my levels, mainly alk, just above normal range. The second was a few weeks ago, when I first posted about my issue. It was recommended I maintain my alk at 7, with sodium bicarbonate, which took about 120 mL a day to barely keep it above 7.

There has to be something I am missing, this has been an endless battle for months. I have a Red Sea reefer 170, mixed with softies, mainly LPS, and a few SPS frags. I am using Hanna Checkers for calcium and alkalinity, and Red Sea for magnesium testing. I switched to coral pro salt mainly for the high alk, figuring it would help my problem, but I may switch to just the Red Sea salt since it’s a little more balanced.

Help me guys! Much appreciated. Sorry for the unorganized second attachment

do you have well water or city water?

 

[Steve Fast]

I suffer from this as well. Recently I tore down two 40s and a 120 and moved everything to a bigger tank. All of these tanks were consuming about 3 dkH of BRS bulk soda ash two part for the past 2 years. My PH was about 8.6 in all tanks. So based on reading the article by Randy Holmes-Farley sited here, I lowered the PH to 8 and stopped using the CO2 scrubber on my skimmer. Nonetheless, the consumption only slightly reduced. When I tore down the tanks, the sand was heavily caked (as RE76 suggested). In fact, so hard I could hardly break it apart. Of course, the gobies and shrimp had a large complex of tunnels… For the new tank, I kept the deep sand bed (for the gobies and shrimp) and cycled the sand for 6 weeks by running water through and seeding it with a dead shrimp and bacteria. Even so, after setting it up, it is still consuming a large amount of Alk (no Ca) about 2 dkH per day. I only dose bicarb and the PH is holding at 8. After reading these two posts (also containing Randy's wisdom)

https://www.reefs.org/forums/topic7068.html

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/clumping-sand-and-high-alk-ca-usage.277944/

I'm hoping that if I let the Alk stay low for a bit and begin dosing low and slow, at some point the consumption will normalize.

Hope this helps

 

[StevenS01]

do you have well water or city water?

City water.. hooked up to a Six stage BRS RODI

 

[Charterreefer]

I didn't read every post here...did you make sure your Magnesium level is high enough as it can effect your dkh stability.

 

[re76]

I would proceed very carefully here. It is my strong opinion that adding more Alk is NOT the solution. Having gone through this personally, I know how frustrating it is.

I would definitely advise slowing down, stop dosing altogether as suggested in the BRS video, wait for things to stabilize, then very slowly start dosing sodium bicarbonate by hand to get your alk up to where it needs to be. Don’t even start the doser again until your levels are where you want them. You might even want to do some large water changes during the reset to help resolve the high Calcium issue.