My Alk is at 6.9/7.0 dkh. Calcium is 455 and ph 8.3. I want to get Alk to 8.5. I was told to use bicarbonate as it will not raise the PH. I can use the calulator to see what I need to get to 8.5 but my question is, how much water do I mix with how much bicarbonate? And then how much of that liquid do I dose per hour, day, week etc? Im told I can simply use baking soda? Thanks for any help.
Raising My Alk?
- Thread starter Doobie65
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Albertan22
Well-Known Member
Use however much water you need to dissolve it. For the long term dosing part of the question, look up Randy’s diy alkalinity recipe then mix to those instructions. Most reef calculators have it as an option. To determine daily dose. Dose it up to your target, verify by testing, then don’t dose for 3 days. Test again at the exact time of day as your verification test. Now take the difference of the values, divide by 3 and you have your daily consumption. You can now use a reef calculator to figure out how much you would need to dose to address the daily consumption and you have your daily maintenance dose. Continue frequent testing once you start this as you will need to tweak up or down (the calculators aren’t perfect). Hopefully that all made sense?
Albertan22
Well-Known Member
For example: you have dosed to 8.5 alk and verified this on Monday by testing at 3pm. Don’t dose again. On Thursday at 3pm you test and are at 7.0 alk. Take 8.5-7.0=1.5 now go 1.5alk/3 days=0.5 alk per day consumption. Use a reef calculator to determine how much alk solution you need to increase alk by 0.5dkh and you have your daily maintenance dose (not the dose to bring it back to 8.5 but what you need to keep it there after you correct it again. An alternative is to plug in what it would take to get from the 7.0 back to 8.5, then divide that by 3 to get your daily dose in ml.
Yes thank you it made perfect sense. As for getiing from 7 to 8.5, I findd out how much BS it takes and dissolve into rodi water? Then I dump all of that in or split up into 2 doses? I hear only 1.0 dkh per day.
Albertan22
Well-Known Member
Yeah don’t raise it too fast if you have a long way to go, but if you do it too slow you won’t hit the target because of consumption. Do it in 2 or 3 doses and see how the tank reacts. Most calculators will tell you how big of an increase to try at once.
Will do, my tank is only 3 months old. I jumped the gun not knowing and bought coral. I have a few lps pieces and only 2 sps frags. Have had them maybe 6 weeks and every time I test my water, Nothing has dropped. It stays pretty much the same. But my alk has been at 7 from day one and I read that in order for things to grow at a decent pace it should be higher so..... everything else im fine with where its at. Im sure as coraline algae starts to grow things will change. If my alk was higher im sure I could just get away with my weekly/biweekly WC. Maybe get a salt that has higher Alk.
Albertan22
Well-Known Member
Yeah you can either find a salt with the alk you want, or just dose your water change water before you do the wc. I use instant ocean salt and dose the calcium and magnesium upwards prior to a wc. I just use epsom salt and bulk calcium.
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