Why is my tank consuming so much Alk?

[Reef_prop88]

Yeah. Only reason I brought it up is because I dealt with a precipitation issue when I ran high calcium and had my ph pegged at a almost constant 8.4 with a co2 scrubber. When you said your sand was getting clumpy that also threw up a little bit of a red flag. Make sure wherever you are dosing drops directly above a powerhead or some other source of flow.

 

[Spieg]

I'd take a close look at your bottle of Alk supplement. When it gets cold, the Alk component can turn solid in the bottle and the remaining liquid will be very weak and not able to boost the levels enough (common problem in the winter). If you shake the bottle and hear something solid clunking around then this is the problem (you can heat the jug by floating it in a sink full of hot water to make it turn back to liquid).

 

[GarrettT]

I'd take a close look at your bottle of Alk supplement.

I verified B-Ionic’s potency. It checked out. Could be Kalk, but Kalk raises my ph by .4 so I know it’s still potent.

 

[GarrettT]

So the dramatic rise in Alk demand is definitely coming from my change in PH.

This week my PH has been maxing out at 8.3. My Kalk alone has been keeping up with the demand without any 2 part supplementation. Interestingly, last night my PH went to 8.4. Instantly, I was curious to finding out the Alk measurement, as under 8.3 my reads are ALWAYS 7.8 every night. After checking, my Alk dropped to 7.0. As such, I had to dose 80ml of Alk to bring it back up to normal levels.

In the photo you will where see my PH went to 8.4, then increased to 8.5 after the 80ml dose. This is a HUGE swing in Alk for just having a 0.1 PH increase. My question is, is this normal? If it is precipitation, how are other people not being affected by it? This rise came strictly from dosing Kalk (50ml/min for 5 minutes every hour). I have about a 8-10x turn over rate through my 50g sump (about 25g of actual use)

 

[Spieg]

I'd say not at all normal... my pH is always 8.2 to 8.4 and Alk consumption is considerably less than yours (especially given that kalkwasser is boosting Alk to begin with).