its been a week

[new2salt2]

well after one week i have not even touched my water.

my nitrates/amonia and nitrites are all 0
my ph is 8.2
alk 4
and my calc is still 576PPM

what would make a tank that is a year old produce such high calc levels?

[Speedy]

Have you dosed calcium before?

[Craig Manoukian]

What salt are you using?

Any corals yet?
Have you tested magnesium?

Could be your crushed coral what do you think Craig Matt anyone?

[new2salt2]

yea i have dosed calcium before. when i got them first time i bought seachem. supposed to just add 2 capfulls every other day. but that was about 3 weeks ago. have not dosed any calcium since then.

today i went back to LFS and complained they gave me a single button polyp and it is already doing same thing. it is balled up now and will prolly not spread again. all my water levels are fine and i even talked to a guy who uses straight tap water from our city to mix his salt and he has great coral growth. so far nobody knows.

i use corallife sea salt

[tdevil]

ok, i think that one of your problems is the calcium levels compared to the alk, the calc is to high and the alk is a bit low, with the calc being as high as it is, one of the reasons the calcium isnt lowering is because you dont have anything that uses it(besides coraline)
i take it that you got the new test kit , when you mix up a new batch of water what are the levels of that, if you are puting in a high calcium level then you will get a high calc level
if it is in a good range then do some water changes to get the calc back where it should be
also, sorry, i cant remember , do you use tap, RO, RO/DI, this could also be a bit of your problem, some city supplies are higher in calc than others, and RO doesnt filter out as much, but better, RO/DI filters out a lot more, but takes the calcium with it, so there is one of the reason for dosing
another, how do you add the coral to the tank, not saying anything here, just asking , this can be another problem, temp/salt differences can be a problem, if added to slow it can be bad, if not long enough it can be bad, confused yet

TD

[quote author=new2salt2 link=board=General;num=1079115741;start=0#0 date=03/12/04 at 10:22:20]well after one week i have not even touched my water.

my nitrates/ammonia and nitrites are all 0
my ph is 8.2
alk 4
and my calc is still 576PPM

what would make a tank that is a year old produce such high calc levels? *[/quote]

When you say your alk is 4 is that before the conversion of DKH x2.8? If so your Alk would be 4 x 2.8 = 11.2 which in my book is great.
But if this 4 is the dkh then you need to boost the Alk.

Use arm and hammer baking soda and spread it out om a cookie sheet and bake it for 1 hour 250 to 300 degrees.
This will boost your alk fast so be careful with it. don't add blindly, test first and add some then test in 1 hour and see where you are. You may want to do this over a couple of days.

RHF= An alternative is to use washing soda or baking soda that you've baked in your oven (250-300 deg F, 1 h).

From Dr. Randy Holmes-Farley:
Zone 4 problems are also a little harder to correct. It is typically caused by overdosing calcium RELATIVE to alkalinity, but does not necessarily imply that alkalinity is either to high or too low (though it is almost always too low). To correct problems in this zone, monitoring of calcium and alkalinity values during correction is especially important.

If alkalinity were less than 4 meq/L (11 dKH; the most common situation in zone 4; shown in Figure 5), I would advise correcting this problem by adding an alkalinity supplement until you have moved into the target zone (or zone 1). For systems with a pH of 8.2 or above, baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) is a good choice. For systems with a pH below 8.2, washing soda (sodium carbonate) is a good choice (though use some baking soda too if the correction is a large one and the pH gets too high; that is, above pH 8.5 or so).

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/nov2002/chem.htm

[new2salt2]

well i am sitting at 4MEQ/L. using a Lamotte test kit at 200 on the plunger then divide by 50 to get the MEQ/L.

i aclimated the coral for about 40 minutes. i am thinking that with such high calc and not precipitation at all that my alk is too low and have began to raise it slowly. i have a 2part addative called C-balance and am using the alk bottle to raise.

i use city water and testing out of tap directly i have less than 100PPM in water , but use a DI filter prior to putting in tank. ill keep you posted.