new bucket of Reef Crystals- high ca++

With their calibrated standard they include with the alk kit, that's good enough for me. Amy thoughts on saliferts Mg test?

 

I retested alk tonight and came up with 7.7. Their standard came to 6.7. I guess I'll need a new strategy for dosing. I've been adding ca, Mg, and carb to the ato. At closer inspection tonight I found a fair amount of sediment in the ato tank. I know it's supposed to cause precipitation but it seemed to be working. I guess the laws of physics apply to me too! I think I'll just add ca and Mg to the ato and manually add carb to the sump a couple times of day. Any thoughts?
It may be a little while before I can get a salifert Mg test kit. No serious LFS around me.

 

Well I managed to get a salifert mash test kit this weekend. The dt showed:
Salifert: 1170, Red Sea: 1400
New Reef Crystals: salifert:1330, RedSea: 1400
Don't know which to trust at this point. I wish there were a standard test solution with a known concentration of mag I could get. At least now I have an idea where my Ca may be going.

 

+1 for Salifert. And you are correct in assuming the low mg (1170) is causing the drop in ca. That's exactly how it works.

 

Sorry to keep harping on the same subject, just trying to understand. Over the past few days I've brought up alk to 9.9 from 7.7 by adding carb. And of course the Ca dropped to 400 from the mid 400's. Makes sense. My question is, is this yin and yang, up and down imbalance likely to continue until mag is raised, or is this just the way it's likely to be regardless of the mag? By the way, I'm going to get the BRS 2 (3) part system within a few days.

 

Yes, you need to raise mg first, then ca and alk. Low mg causes alk and ca to precipitate each other out of solution.

 

Wow, nice thread, I got dizzy just reading it.

My take home from this is that I should try another test kit for my alk. I'm using API for that one, and rarely get over 7.

 

The nice thing about saliferts alk kit is they give you a reference. I wish they would include that in their other kits.