Cali Kid Corals

Alkalinity issues with Tropic Marin All-for-Reef

Seems like Lou at Tropic Marin's USA office is out of office till Jan 7th. That is too far off for me to wait, considering that my Alk levels have been dropping to dangerous levels even after increasing my AFR dosage to 14ml/12gal water volume. This is more than the maximum allowed daily dose :/

Did some research and found this chart, which officially requires dosing of Balling B in addition to AFR, which kind of defeats the purpose of a single AIO additive. Plus, it will also require purchasing another doser.

Screenshot 2021-12-27 103800.jpg




After much deliberation, I've decided to switch back to the Balling method. ESV-B Ionic Alkalinity on the auto doser, and manual dosing of Calcium a couple of days a week.
Will consider giving AFR another shot in the future.
 
I think this is the right answer.

AFR should be good (at least worth trying) for small/medium low-consumption tanks, like a softy/LPS predominant tank. Yours is small but not low-consumption.
 
thesassyindian said:
pH is between 7.5 and 7.8 - unable to maintain any higher levels due to my setup.

View attachment 34152
Click to expand...
Also, looking closer at this if your PH is truly getting that low, corals will be unable to use alk. Therefore there are long periods of time that you are dosing and none is being consumed. Which would lead to a spike/buildup of alk. This will happen with light and no light to an extent as well. Might consider dosing only during light hours.
 
JVU said:
Presumably you top off your water from a jug of RODI or distilled water or something. You can add it to that. Same idea as the previous one that you could add Ca to your top off water if you dose Alk.
Click to expand...
Huh - I was under the impression that Kalk needs to be dripped into the tank - not poured in with top off water.

If I mix kalk and use the doser to calibrate my hourly dose, I suppose that would work. yes?
 
thesassyindian said:
Huh - I was under the impression that Kalk needs to be dripped into the tank - not poured in with top off water.

If I mix kalk and use the doser to calibrate my hourly dose, I suppose that would work. yes?
Click to expand...
Create a saturated mixture of kalk and dose it in a controlled manner (just like you're doing with AFR). An old trick is to add it to topoff water, but that will vary depending on evaporation in your tank, and I don't recommend that.
 
Meshmez said:
Create a saturated mixture of kalk and dose it in a controlled manner (just like you're doing with AFR). An old trick is to add it to topoff water, but that will vary depending on evaporation in your tank, and I don't recommend that.
Click to expand...
You just need to make sure you aren't dosing more than you would be topping off, because then it will affect salinity...
 
Instead of multiple manual daily top-offs, have you considered this? I run this on my nuvo 20, haven’t gotten around to setting up the autoaqua. It sits on the back chamber, I’m using a 1L smart water bottle (I’m sure you can come up with something more visually appealing). Run through 1L every 12-14 hours on my 20 so, on a 13.5, I’m sure you can get 24 hours out of a 1L bottle. You could mix your appropriate 24 hour supply of Kalk in this and let it drip over that period. It uses gravity, fool proof, no risk of flooding and rather than top off multiple times a day, you fill the bottle once a day.

Amazon.com : SKEMIX Auto Top Off Water Filler Aquarium Mini ATO System Fish Tortoise Tank Water Level Controller No Wiring Float Valve : Pet Supplies

Amazon.com : SKEMIX Auto Top Off Water Filler Aquarium Mini ATO System Fish Tortoise Tank Water Level Controller No Wiring Float Valve : Pet Supplies
www.amazon.com
 
thesassyindian said:
Huh - I was under the impression that Kalk needs to be dripped into the tank - not poured in with top off water.

If I mix kalk and use the doser to calibrate my hourly dose, I suppose that would work. yes?
Click to expand...
That’s a good point. In your small system you wouldn’t want to add too much at one time and have the Alk and pH spike.
 
B’s Nano Reef said:
Instead of multiple manual daily top-offs, have you considered this? I run this on my nuvo 20, haven’t gotten around to setting up the autoaqua. It sits on the back chamber, I’m using a 1L smart water bottle (I’m sure you can come up with something more visually appealing). Run through 1L every 12-14 hours on my 20 so, on a 13.5, I’m sure you can get 24 hours out of a 1L bottle. You could mix your appropriate 24 hour supply of Kalk in this and let it drip over that period. It uses gravity, fool proof, no risk of flooding and rather than top off multiple times a day, you fill the bottle once a day.

Amazon.com : SKEMIX Auto Top Off Water Filler Aquarium Mini ATO System Fish Tortoise Tank Water Level Controller No Wiring Float Valve : Pet Supplies

Amazon.com : SKEMIX Auto Top Off Water Filler Aquarium Mini ATO System Fish Tortoise Tank Water Level Controller No Wiring Float Valve : Pet Supplies
www.amazon.com
Click to expand...
Yes I use it when we go out of town for a few days. Adding Kalk through this would be too nondeterministic for my comfort. I'm sticking with ESV Alk+Ca for now.
 
Just swapped out the bottle of AFR with ESV Alkalinity and went back to by original dose/schedule. Alk had dropped to 5.95dKH by the time I came back from work :-/
1640660925294.png
 
Remind me, do you have any coral in this system?

I use All for reef, switched in September from ESV B ionic. I dose about 160mls in a 110 gallon system. This supports a heavy sps frag tank with fluctuations around .3-.4 on average. There is a delay to its consumption, but the delay shortens as the bacteria transition to consuming calcium formate. The kicker that I didn’t learn until I talked to Lou is that the bacteria they refer to reside in mass in the coral tissue. That was his explanation for why newer systems convert calcium formate slower.

On the other side of that, do you know where all that alk is going? When I was having issues it was related to magnesium and precipitation, but your PH is far to low for that to be happening. You may want to restart the apex brain and recalibrate the probe. I have been having issues with Apex Ph probes recently and couldn’t resolve the issue until I rebooted the apex and recalibrated.


Best of luck and happy holidays!
 
robert4025 said:
Your Trident may need to be serviced. You probably want it to test the calibration fluid again to see if the calibration is still good.
Click to expand...
The trident is working fine - cross checked the Alk readings with Salifert and Hanna.
Also recalibrated the pH probe using temperature acclimated Milwaukee calibration solutions with TC enabled.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top