My quest to get my levels correct.

[Enrique797]

So, my tank has been up for some time and I am bringing things along slowly. I've recently dialed in my salt using the Tropic Marin hydrometer so I am now turning my attention to other things. I'm long overdue in getting my Alkalinity, Calcium and Magnesium levels correct.

My current levels according to my recently calibrated Trident are ALK 5.46; Ca 453 and MG 1312. It seems to me the first order of business is to confirm these readings with my Hanna testers and then dose ALK slowly to bring it up. Does that seem like the right path? Feel free to share your experience or thoughts here. I'll continue to update on my progress.

 

[Ippyroy]

Do you have corals? The first step is to stabilize the Alk. If you don't have any corals I think you can up the Alk a lot quicker, but soda ash will raise your PH quickly. If you do have corals, raise it up by about 1 DKH per week. Once you get it to where you like, don't dose for 3 days. This will give you the daily consumption rate. Use this calculator to find out what your calcium levels should be for equal amounts of calcium and alk.

Reef Chemistry Calculator

Good Luck!

 

[Enrique797]

No coral yet. Was thinking I would use Sodium Bi-Carbonate to bring it up over a couple of days.

 

[Enrique797]

So, I manually tested my Mg level today and confirmed the 1312 level the Trident is showing seems to be current. So, I decided to dose 200ml of BRS Pharma mix. I also ordered some bi-carbonate that should be here on Thursday. Plan is to bring Mg up to 1350 while I get a sense of the volume required to get there. Just going slow with this for not. Nothing good in this hobby happens fast...

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I'd test your alk kit on some new salt water to convince yourself you are using it correctly, but yes, boosting it would be in order.

 

[Enrique797]

Randy, thank you so much for the advice.

I mixed up a quarter gallon of new Tropic Marin Pro-Reef and performed 2 test with my Hanna tester. Both with the same result 6.9. I then tested the tank with a result of 5.7. My Trident has consistently been testing at 5.4. I've been able to get my Magnesium up to a pretty steady 1350 or so. I planning on starting to dose Sodium Bicarbonate to bring the levels up to about 9 which seems to be right in the middle of Randy's recommended range in this article.

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-05/rhf/index.htm

I'll be doing this little by little and relying on the trident measurements every 6 hours. So I'll dose between the test and bring it up slowly at first until I figure out the dose.

 

[Enrique797]

Alright, so here are actions and results to this point.

8pm added 300ml Sodium Bicarbonate

2am Trident test: 6.05 dkH, 456 Ca and 1358 Mg

3am added 400ml Sodium Bicarbonate

6am Trident test: 7.25 dkH;

7:22am dosed 200ml Sodium Bicarbonate

It is interesting to me that the level increased by .65 dkH from a 300ml dose of Sodium Bicarbonate but nearly double that amount when I dosed 400ml increasing by 1.2 dkH.

I'm looking forward to seeing what the dkH level is after this 200ml dose.