Very low alk high cal

[Jay]

Hello:

Well I checked the water in my newest system today and was surprised t see it was out of wack so far. I have 500 Calcium and 4.8 dkh Alk. This is way wrong but I guess I have neglected to test in a while as I have been happily dosing Kalk at night thinking things would remain in balance. How would I saftly raise my Alk to 8 DKH while lowering my Calcium to 400? Beleive it or not I have never had to dose any buffer in any of my systems before. Thanks to Kalkwasser and its ability to keep things stable. I dose Kalk every other night in each tank and then test for Calcium on the weekends. Well today I blew the dust off the other test kits and started testing....WOW what a mistake to not test this regularly. I have no way to test my ph till I get the test kit in the mail. What should I do???

Jay

[Jay]

Bump

[ping]

Stop dripping the Kalk, and add a buffer. Slow drip the buffer so it doesnt precipitate with the calcium. If not, you are just making sand. What type of salt do you use, it makes a huge difference on the supplements required (buffer or calcium).

[Chris Jones]

How you got that way, I dont know. but your problem isn't that bad. first let me give you a link that will put you on the same page as far as you r alk measurement is concerned. it is a conversion table.
http://ozreef.org/content/view/5/2/
Next you need to look at this article and table and than the recommendations.

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

you are in zone 3. and probably because of the drip. so follow the recommendations and happy tanking.

[ping]

Chris, that is a great site. I refer to it often. I think he is in the 4 area?

[Birdlady]

If you are using Oceanic salt, that could be how you got that way

If not, you prob just need an occasional boost of buffer. I use one fairly regularly.
That is a great article...at the moment, I am in zone 3 working on my fix

[fletch]

Birdlady, I have been using Oceanic salt from day 1 and I have not yet had a problem with it. There may have been some batches with higher than normal calcium levels in them but I have not come across any my self. so if he is using Oceanic salt mix that may or may not be how he got were he is but I don't think I would be so certain that is the problem. JMO ................. John

[Birdlady]

No, I did not mean to imply that was the only possiblity! Sorry if it came across that way....I just meant that could have been it.....

I have talked to several people with that problem....I followed with an "if not,", statement....plain text can be so difficult....**sigh**

[fletch]

No problem ................. John

[Jay]

Hey..sorry Ive been away. I had something I had to deal with away from home. I am using Instant Ocean right now. I had used Oceanic but heard the same things that everyone else about it and changed to IO about 1.5 buckets ago. I have some og that Kent Pro buffer DKH liquid supplement. It says to add 10 ML every 40 gallons every day till I hit the target is reached.
I was under the impression that if I only used Kalk that this could not happen. I never dose any other calcium supplements. Could my type of lights effect this...sounds like a stupid question I know but Im trying to figure out how this happened. That tank has 250 watt halides and the other tank that stays rock stable has 440 watts VHO.
Do I really need to slow drip this buffer? I did another water change on both tanks today. I did a 30% change last week in the 55gal VHO tank and did nothing to the 55 gallon Halide tank last weekend. Today I changed out about 20 gallons from the tank with the buffer problem. I will test again tonight for ALK and PH. I bought this stupid PH test kit...American Pharmacuticles I think...it only measures if you ar at 7.9, 8.2 or 8.4. That isnt accurate enough for me. What do you all use for your PH?

Jay

I will checkout those links