YIKES ! High everything!

We switched from regular tap water...used for 7 years...actually had no big issues except alk would drop quickly and cal. never wanted to stay as high as I wanted it.........anyway we switched to a new 120 gallon.

We now are using ro/di water. Added probably 80 gallons or so of new water to it last week, but the salt we normally use is Instant Ocean. We had left over IO, Oceanic, and reef that hubby combined in the bucket.
My tests are showing up

cal - 580
alk 12
mag 1580
Amm. 0
Nitrates 10

sg is a bit high at 1.28 and we are slowly lowering it to 1.25 w/ new refractomoter.

I'm just not sure why cal and alk and mag is so high is it a mixture of the salts we had? Do I leave it w/ no water change and see if they drop? I have new tank, so no coraline algae sucking it out.

I have fish, lps, softies. Everything looks "ok" , but due to mishap during moving them almost lost EVERYTHING. Only lost one shrimp and LG Sailfin we'd have for 5 years. Corals that looked bad seem to be opening up and looking better. (thought we'd loose them for sure, but actually the frogspawn and hammer is closing their mouths now which surprised me).

 

whenever my mom goes to Safeway she gets me those 1 gallon cartons of water, they're Ro/DI and only 99c a piece! my hair algae disapearred when i started using Ro/Di water, it's a wonder.

 

when you lower the salinity to 1.026 the other parameters will also lower a bit. there close to where i keep mine, no worries, heres mine, 500 Ca, 20 dKH, 1550 Mg. whats your K,Sr,B ? without the addition of the elements they will drop due to the tanks consumption rates.

 

sorry.......k?, sr? b?

We actually purchased an ro/di unit for use on this tank. Had been saving up for one and finally did it right. We have the neptune controller 3 on it. temp 80.4 and ph 8.22

 

Which Potassium, Strontium, and Boron test kits do you recommend?

 

I was going to say, those numbers aren't really that high. Yor CA is a little high, and alk a little low, but not really all that bad. And +1 to RG. Lower the salinity and those numbers will drop

 

: I don't have those kits, but I've dosed Seachem reef plus and reef trace twice a week. I did that in the old tank and it made a big difference in corals. Maybe I'll hold off since the water is so new in the new tank.

I new starting to use ro/di would start changing my water chemistry but have been surprised so far.

I thought alk should be no higher than 11 ? Mine is 12

 

Do you test for K, Sr, and B? also ... how important do you think it is to test for those?

 

My API test kit says it should be between 8 and 12.

 

just curious, how do you keep a 20 dkh? thats 7.4 meq/l.