What am I doing wrong?...calling water chemistry guru's

I agree with evolved here! If your ALK drip stops just before your lights come on, your PH is most likely going to rise too high and therfore, CAL precipitaion is occurring. Your PH rises during the day when the lights come on wether you dose or not.

That is a lot of ALK though. I only dose about 12 ml's nightly in my 46 BF mixed reef. CAL is around 25 ml's per day.

 

I agree with everyone else. Do not chase the numbers, let the tank age. Minimal dosing and water changes, and I would cut back on testing and let the visual results ( how do the corals look ) be your guide, if that makes any sense. Believe me, sometimes interventions can be worse than the mild problems.

I do not have my ATO any more, so now after many months I have a schedule. I tested for along time, months, and now I can pretty much count on my levels being in a specific range, and no ajustments to dosing needs to be made. Now as things grow out, than yes I will probably increase dosing amounts.

Monday: 4 drops of ca and 4 drops buffer, given seperately over several minutes. Feed pretty heavily.

Wed: Water change, and 4 drops magnesium.

Friday is just a repeat of Monday.

Takes weeks sometimes to see how sps will respond to parameter changes if the changes are minimal IMO.

 

I agree 100%. Things were looking pretty good until the last few days. Hopefully I didn't disrupt things so much that I loose any life. Eager to get home from work today and inspect after no dose last night and this morning and also see how this no dose for 7 days pans out.

Most of the corals cringed when I scraped the glass clean yesterday and stayed closed up for a while. I was probably releasing the Ca back into the water causing a spike, but I had to clean it!

In the very near future I'm looking into a more automated form of Dosing once I can get more steady and stable results manually because there's no way I'd be able to dial in the automation if I can't do it right on my own. Thanks again for the replies. I'll keep this updated.

 

Update:

So I haven't dosed since being suggested so in the thread. Tested params yesterday just before my water change. All are the same as previously except for the following.
Salinity: 1.028
KH: 6.85
Ca: 385
Mg: pegged my Salifert test. Emptied the syringe and color still hadn't changed so 1500+. wonder if it's this high due to my salinity?

Most corals are unchanged. My red Monti cap is bleached ever so slightly and one of my other montis bleached a tad as well. Subtracting my current numbers from my originals and dividing by 5( for the number of days I didn't dose) yields a daily Ca usage of 6ppm? And KH of approx .5?

Performed a 5 gallon WC yesterday using ESV salt mix. I made the water Saturday night and allowed it sit overnight with a small powerhead and 50watt heater. Test results a few minutes prior to it's addition to DT.
Mixed to a salinity of 1.022 to help bring DT salinity down.temp of water @ 78 degrees F.
Ca: 470
KH: 9.9
Mg: 1275

Tank tests taken tonight
KH: 6.85 still
Ca: up to 400
Salinity down to 1.027

Thoughts?

 

your headed in the right direction Nismo
that DKH of 6.85 is still below the generally accepted reef tank minimum - which is 7

I would work towards increasing it to 8 , but take at least 2 days to achieve this
using an alkalinity buffer (Seachems reef builder is good IME)
the elevated salinity will account for the high Magnesium but with water changes weekly using water with Mag level at 1275, it will come down over a period of time

once it gets around the 1450 mark - you may need to consider supplementing your water change water with additional Magnesium as 1380 - 1450 are optimum Mag levels
and 1275 is a tad low

Steve

 

Can you test the baseline mag level to newly mixed water before the water change.

What salt mix are you using? Sorry if I missed that.

 

Performed a 5 gallon WC yesterday using ESV salt mix. I made the water Saturday night and allowed it sit overnight with a small powerhead and 50watt heater. Test results a few minutes prior to it's addition to DT.
Mixed to a salinity of 1.022 to help bring DT salinity down.temp of water @ 78 degrees F.
Ca: 470
KH: 9.9
Mg: 1275

Hi Corailline - I believe these figures where for the newly mixed batch of SW
What I did miss was the fact its a 1.022 in order to help bring down his DT SG
at 1.025 , the mag level would probably be bang on target IMO

 

Ahhh sorry I totally missed that :-/

Thanks Steve.

It should be very close to target, hmmm. I am at a loss, gotta think about it.

Nismo, excellent detail to the post it really helps.

 

Nothing good happens fast in an aquarium. You have got some good info here and are heading in the right direction. I didn't use ESV, but it sounds like you were using way too much. This is in a 55g right? You are on the right track now.

The only thing I want to add is don't be so concerned with numbers. Natural salt water has a Ca level of 380-400, and alk of 7. Works just great for growing reefs that can be seen from space. IF you have very stable water, very low nutrients, very good lights, very good flow, and very good filtration.... THEN you can jack up your chem levels and get some really good growth. BUT, your corals do not NEED elevated levels much higher than natural levels in order to thrive.Stability is much much more import than actual numbers. Ca swings can be tolerated, but Alk swings cause real havoc on your livestock. Go slow.

Also, I went through the same sort of thing when I went to BRS 2 part.... dosed way too much... and to give an idea that was 160ml for a 100 gallon system.... everything got way out of wack and all I did was calcified all of my pumps. One of the best pieces of advice I got was to stop chasing numbers. Just stop testing. Get a daily dose figured out and do that. Test weekly.... figure out how much it changed if it did.... then take off the daily amount and test next week. I was dialed in in two weeks rock solid. (note to you: you should probably take your pumps apart for a good inspection and cleaning if they are calcified)

And one last thing.... if you start at say 400 for ca and then you test a week later and get 380... well you crunch the numbers, come up with how much you are under, divide by 7 and then do that.... well you will stay at 380 and you should be steady. My point is that getting your level to a number is one thing, then you need to figure out daily consumption. If you find you have changed from the level you started from, then you have to add/subtract to get back to that number and then continue with a proper daily dose. Does that make sense?

 

Thanks for the replies guys and gals! I know the more specific I am the better it'll help you to help me so that's why I try.

I am going to give up chasing the numbers. I'd rather keep my tank inhabitants happy through stability. It's actually kinda nice not testing and dosing everyday !! Knowing that I'm not so far off after doing nothing for the last six days now has really shown me how much I exaggerated things.

It's late. I'll go over the replies again tomorrow and I still have some work to do in terms of figuring out my daily
Usage and dose supplements. Off to bed and up again in about an hour to try and catch the eclipse! Thanks to all who chimed in their wealth of knowledge. I'll distribute some karma once I get on the PC.