Salvaged Acros and monti, think they'll make it?

I'd get your calcium to atleast 380ppm. IMHO 380-450ppm is good.

 

I agree. You need to get your calcium up to at least that of natural sea water which is 420ppm. With your Mg. at 1500 you should be able to find a pretty easy balance. 12 dkh would give you a balanced calcium of 450ppm.

 

So, why is my calcium at 350 then? Could the pH be a cause for this or is it mainly because of the RO water change I did a few days back?

What I mean to ask is: How come my tank isn't yet balanced with the Mg at 1500 and alk at 12, or 12.3 to be exact? I do not want to add purple up because it will make my alk higher as I read on the article you showed me some time ago. Also, kalkwasser is out of the shelf of options for me. Turbo calcium or similar is what I need to use. I'll get some tomorrow.
I just can't seem to understand why won't my tank stabilize once and for all?? I've seemed to make several bad calls during these 10 months that's made my tank's progress very slow

I don't know... I feel I'm getting closer though

 

here is the picture. the higher your Alk goes the lower your Ca will be and visa versa. Your Mg levels, while above NSW are fine, but your Alk is pushing it. If you want better numbers do a 10 percent water change followed by another every other day. As for dosing, I think you want to get a two part kit from BRS. If you live in a big enough town you can get the chemicals yourself, but I only suggest that if you know what you are doing.

You have to be a little careful with the free ions floating around in your tank. The two part formula balances as best it can the chloride sulfate and sodium ions as they present in NSW. People have found if these are out of whack it gets bad (sciencey lingo here)

As you have alot of SPS frags, your demands are going to continue to grow with your coral, which is why it got low to begin with. The best thing you can do for those corals is develop a dosing regimen to keep all your levels stable and stop pouring in on thing a week and hoping. Here is a good article An Improved Do-it-Yourself Two-Part Calcium and Alkalinity Supplement System by Randy Holmes-Farley - Reefkeeping.com

 

Thanks for the link. I've seen that before and now I just thought the exact same thing I thought then... I'm scared of dosing stuff already. At first it was ok, because I was dosing so little it won't make a difference, but then I miscalculated and messed things up. My corals really got bad. I'm editing pics for upload... it's now just a little intimidating, but I guess I'll have to be way more methodical than what I have been in the past.

I'll upload a bunch of pics in a while. Still editing and cropping them.

 

You need to use a calculator and find the balance. It doesn't do it on it's own. At 12 dkh balanced calcium is 446 ppm. In this case if you wanted to keep 12dkh as your target you would dose only calcium and raise it to your target of 446ppm. Now you are balanced. Then you would NOT DOSE for 1 week. You would test both alk and calcium and record the test results everyday. Also record the difference from the result and your target. Edit* not your target I meant the result from the day before.
Example:
Calcium
date result used
6/10 450ppm testing began
6/11 447 3ppm
6/12 445 2ppm
6/13 441 4ppm
6/14 438 3ppm
6/15 430 8ppm
6/16 426 4ppm
6/17 420 6ppm

Add all of the numbers in the used column together and divide by 7. This will give your daily useage average. In this example it would be 30ppm/7= 4.28ppm calcium used daily on average. Subtract 4.28 from 450 which equals 445.72 and use this number as your current calcium on a chem calculator. Put 450 in the desired calcium box on the calculator, pick the product used and enter. The result will be the ml required for your daily dose to maintain your levels at your target numbers.
You do the exact same for alkalinity. Also I would suggest you double check by using at least 2 different calculators. Sometimes you'll get different results. The one I gave you and BRS work best for me.
I test calcium and alkilinty once a week to see that I'm staying on track and targets are maintained.
I currently test Magnesium 2x per month but my overload of mangroves in my fuge strip alot out. You would get away with bi monthly testing/dosing to keep it at 1450-1500 until you are comfortable then I would guess you could go to monthly.

 

good advice reefmonkey!

 

After a lot of thinking, I decided to add the corals I have and are not doing well in my opinion, and then make a new thread to help ID my new corals from the frag-swap. I also apologize in advance for the blurry pictures. Even with tripod, this camera and ALL of the settings do not work well for me...or maybe I don't work well with cameras and period!

In these pictures, if you see green on the rocks it's because the lights are OFF, no green means lights ON.
So, first, let me show you how they're looking now (you can click on any picture to see it bigger):


Compare the picture above, with the two pictures from below. The corals in the back are the ones I got from the rubble bin in hopes of recovery.
The one on the left:


And the one you see on the right:



I know it's very blurry, but I can't do better. Maybe my wife will take better pics for me later.
Look specially at the one in the center, and compare:

Pic from vendor:


There are quite a few more, but I'm having problems primarily with the acroporas. I'll post a link to the album at the end.
Here, look at this one, check out the bottom left base of the "blue bridge Coral" or Heliopora (thanks to Tomita for helping ID)
Before:

Now:


Like I said, even the mushrooms look pretty bad.

Here's the link to the album with the pics I got from the coral vendor when I bought them:
Picasa Web Albums - 10465453365785127... - Coral pics fr...

Here are the pics I took today, again I apologize about how blurry some of these are. Also, not all of the corals will show since some of them are already dead and out of the tank:
Picasa Web Albums - 10465453365785127... - Corals 6/21/10

I seriously need to fix this. It is getting really frustrating
I'll ask my wife to take pictures later when she gets back from university.

Thanks for the help and for watching.

- Mag.

 

id say it was the rapid increase and high Alk levels but thats just my guess. When I hit my tank with an accidental alk boost it didnt want same thing. you just need to either dose following the reefmonkeys advice and the standard two part solution or do alot of water changes. For now I would do a couple of water changes. if you have most salts it will lower your Mg and Alk and raise your Ca levels from where they are at right now to more standard NSW levels.

 

Updating this thread with the current readings:

Temp: 79f
SG: 1.024
pH: 8
Amonia, nitrite, nitrate are all at 0
Alk: 12.2
Mag: 1500
Cal: 350

I'm not sure what's up with my calcium. I've been doing water changes with good salt (reef Crystals). Other than that one 5 gallon WC with fresh RO water with great results to bring down the alk from almost 16 to 11.

I'm getting my calcium chloride tomorrow hopefully. This will help balance things out, I hope.

- Mag.