Who has too much in their tank?

  • Thread starter Thread starter BornHandy
  • Start date Start date
  • Tagged users Tagged users None
The pH swing of 7.9 to 8.2 does not concern me much. Mine can swing that much, too. Although I have a lot of chaetomorpha in my refugium, my pH is usually lower in the morning. It's back up to something like 8.2 in the late afternoon.
A dosing pump should help to keep the alkalinity stable. Are you using a controller for dosing as well?
Yes, my controller runs the dosing pump (brs 1.1 mil per minute) five times during the day cycle, two hours apart for 15 minutes per cycle. I'm testing the water to see how that does, and if it's too much or not enough, I'll make whatever change I need. I am sure that eventually, I'll need to just dose all of the top-off water as kalk, but until then, this is me wading out into the kalkwasser.
 
My pH has a pretty big swing from day to night - much higher at night (that refugium is a big help). I just started using a dosing pump to put a little kalk in off and on during the day (yesterday, actually). I have been seeing 7.9-ish for daytime, and 8.2-ish at night. I don't test Calcium or Alkalinity all that much (I just wasn't seeing much difference from one test to another). I am due for another round of testing - probably tonight.

My intent was to increase testing frequency (dosing as needed) as stony coral numbers increase, but I just don't have many right now.
If you are dosing kalk I think you should be testing Alk fairly regularly. It is fairly easy to too much alkalinity using kalk if you are only focusing on pH.
 
If you are dosing kalk I think you should be testing Alk fairly regularly. It is fairly easy to too much alkalinity using kalk if you are only focusing on pH.
Yeah, I said in an earlier post I just started this yesterday. I am just dosing a tiny bit for now to get a little experience with it.
 
Yeah, I said in an earlier post I just started this yesterday. I am just dosing a tiny bit for now to get a little experience with it.
Sounds good. I'm a fan of Kalk and dose 1400ml per day spread out over 70 doses. It raises my Alk by 0.3dkh per day and my pH by around 0.05 in around 170g of total water volume. It takes quite a bit of fully saturated solution to have much impact on pH or Alk.
Not only do I like that little pH boost, but I like that it gives me a few extra days between refilling my ATO.
I started by trying to run Kalk in my ATO but my evaporation rate wasn't consistent so my alk was all over the place.
 

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