Help With Alk!!!!!!

[YellowBelly]

My salinity is at 1.025. I like to keep my salinity on the high side (1.026-1.027). My tank does get indirect sunlight. I have a reef tank with over 30 corals (11 SPS corals), 5 shrimp,1 starfish and 9 fish.

[lunatik_69]

yeah, I just saw your web site, btw, your tank is beautiful!!! Im not an expert, but all of your water parm's sound to be in check. The only thing that comes to mind is that your tank is sitting right in front of the window. I know that the sun depleats ph from swimming pools and I think that alk and ph are closely related. The people to ask would be coralreefer, jasonmckenzie, mattgeezer, crappier. those guys/gals know their s**t( pardon my french)

[Maudsley]

Your Salifert alk kit might be bad....on another forum salifert has been conducting tests and some of the batch numbers are giving a false high reading by 1.5-3.0 DKH. My opinion is go get you an API alk kit and test with that....your alk might not be that high... also for every 1mg/l of alk used by your tank only 20ppm of calcium will be used. With all those corals I would be inclined to say you will be dosing alk almost eveyday unless you drip Kalk.

[Tangster]

There is no need to panic I keep our DKH at 16 or as close as I can and The P.H matters not I run Ph high also PH of 8.6 is nothing to worry about .. You have more corals growth and less algae growth.. PH of 8.8 is nothing either that all depends on time of day and if you are using a regent test then its off so far anyways who could tell ? Just let it be maybe bump the Mag to 1500 and get the ca. to 450 to 500 you will See a huge difference in the tanks looks and coral growth. I seldom drop names so I won't here either But a expert many here think can walk on water took that advice and he will be the first to tell you its a good thing. I see it in his articles lately.. But as mentioned in another post might want to test it with another kit seems old Sanjay ? what what ever his name is sent some trash out the door.

[YellowBelly]

Originally Posted by Maudsley

Your Salifert alk kit might be bad....on another forum salifert has been conducting tests and some of the batch numbers are giving a false high reading by 1.5-3.0 DKH.

You're right. I opened up a new Salifert KH Test Kit and my reading was 11.5. I added Kent Marine Superbuffer a few days before but usually it drops back down to 5.4 dKH after a few days so I think my problem was a faulty test kit. Thanks!