Major drop in alk

[SteelerMike]

I discovered this evening that my alk has dropped from 7.3 to 4.3 in the last week! Apparently my check valve from my regulator to my calcium reactor malfunctioned and was not allowing the CO2 into my reactor. That's my guess anyway. The regulator is working and when I tried to disconnect the check valve it broke so I can't really test my hypothesis. So what do I do now?!!.... My plan is to slowly bring the alk back up .5 a day dosing baking soda. Is that too fast..too slow? I have a mixed reef that I have been slowly turning more sps dominant. I have several large colonies and many small frags as well. Any advice would be greatly appreciated

 

[Downbeach]

Its been suggested that you can increase your alk up to 1.4dKH per day. But, to be safe, I'd keep it around 1dKH per day over the normal uptake level.

 

[Diesel]

Depens on what kind of corals you have.
If SPS which are a pain I would just raise by 0.5 if any others like lps or softies go close to 1.0

 

[SteelerMike]

Depens on what kind of corals you have.
If SPS which are a pain I would just raise by 0.5 if any others like lps or softies go close to 1.0

Thanks. I'm going to shoot for .5 per day. I'm thinking it dropped slowly as the alk naturally depleted itself without the CA reactor replenishing it so hopefully going back up slowly will reduce the impact on the corals. It is a mixed reef but the SPS are the corals I'm most concerned about...the others seem to be much more tolerant.