Sudden drop in alk, should I be concerned?

malfist

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Hey all,

Wondering what's going on with my tank. My trident has tested a sudden drop in alk and magnesium over the last two days. Calcium has held steady. Not sure what has prompted this and if I should take a corrective action.

DKH normally hovers just over 8, usually between the 8-8.25 range. Last two days it's slumped to just under 7. Hanna checker confirms the reduction (although disagrees with the trident about the exact value).

Tank stats:
65 gallons
Corals: 3 types of euphyllia, candy cane, duncan, mushrooms, 2 toadstools, a large green singular, gsp
Stocking: 2 dwarf angles, 3 cardinalfish, 2 clowns, royal gramma, large bubble tip anemone, blue maxima claim
CUC: lots of snails, 4 rock boring urchins, and a healthy amount of bristleworms, and sponges, fuge with cheato and pods
Dosing: Triton method, 6ml/day, neophos 45ml/day (.28ppm/day), esv nitrate 2.8ppm/day, reef energy ab+ 24ml/day, 50ml phyto, chaetogro 8ml/day
Feeding: flake automatic feeder 2x/day, plus 1 cube of frozen mysis/day

Nitrates read around 8ppm, phosphates test between 0.00ppm and 0.03ppm (trying to raise to 0.10ppm to fight dinos)

I made two changes prior to seeing the drop, I moved the input/output of the UV from the sump to the display and removed the GFO from the reactor (it's running, but empty), I also replaced the carbon in the reactor.

Should I increase my dosing? Is something bad going on?

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Idoc

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The LPS corals use alkalinity, but not typically in large quantities like SPS corals. Did you have a big increase in coralline algae growth?

Did you use a product like lanthanum chloride to reduce phosphates?

Maybe some others will chime in with some other possibilities.
 
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malfist

malfist

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I've seen some Coraline algae growth lately but that's been over weeks. It's slowly spreading.

Not dosing anything to remove phosphates, am dosing quite a bit of phosphates to try and raise phosphates for a dino problem.
 

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