Jestersix

Dosing alk?

IOnceWasLegend

IOnceWasLegend

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In an effort to keep my parameters stable (specifically, alk), I'm interested in starting dosing. I did a quick test today, and the relevant parameters were:

Calcium: 540 ppm (seems high)

Alk: 7.5

pH: 8.0

That seems pretty high for calcium, and I've been having trouble keeping my alk over 8 without water changes every two or three days. I'm still learning about dosing, but - given this - am I correct in assuming that I should:

  1. Dose alkalinity only to start (no more than 0.5 dKh per day)
  2. Measure alk and calcium every day to ensure there's no major swings en route to target alk (dkh = 9)
  3. Once I've hit 9 and have more balance between alk and calcium, THEN start a time course measuring alk/calcium usage every day?
 
That sounds very reasonable. I just started down this path by getting a Trident. I began dosing All For Reef manually which is expensive but easy, since you only need to dose one thing. Once I got alkalinity to my target, I got a DOS and have started automatic dosing to keep it there.
 
As long as your Ca+ is over 400 , it really doesn't matter. But @Coral reefer is right, don't worry about that for now. Work one variable at a time...

You should see what my Ca is... waaay over the norm. But as long as my alknos good, everything works itself out
 
Alk changes much more rapidly, and too-rapid changes in it are much more dangerous. So as you are adjusting your Alk dosing you need to test every day until you have a dose locked in, then can test less frequently. Alk levels also fluctuate throughout the day/night cycle even with continuous dosing (more Alk is used up when lights are on), so make sure you are measuring at consistent times of day. Otherwise you might mistake normal variation as needing to increase or decrease your dosing.

You don’t need to test Ca every day. Even if you don’t add any (and you shouldn’t with those levels) it will probably take weeks to come down significantly.

Your high Ca is probably due to your salt since you are doing a lot of water changes. Many of them have weirdly high Ca and Mg for some reason. Worth testing a fresh batch of saltwater.
 
NanoCrazed said:
As long as your Ca+ is over 400 , it really doesn't matter. But @Coral reefer is right, don't worry about that for now. Work one variable at a time...

You should see what my Ca is... waaay over the norm. But as long as my alknos good, everything works itself out
Click to expand...

Yeah, I know it's fairly high (and my assumption is the salt mix). My main concern was high calcium could be contributing to my rapid drops in alk after doing WCs, so I'm focusing on trying to stabilize alkalinity for now and just wanted to make sure that my course of action was solid since I'm new to dosing.

JVU said:
Alk changes much more rapidly, and too-rapid changes in it are much more dangerous. So as you are adjusting your Alk dosing you need to test every day until you have a dose locked in, then can test less frequently. Alk levels also fluctuate throughout the day/night cycle even with continuous dosing (more Alk is used up when lights are on), so make sure you are measuring at consistent times of day. Otherwise you might mistake normal variation as needing to increase or decrease your dosing.

You don’t need to test Ca every day. Even if you don’t add any (and you shouldn’t with those levels) it will probably take weeks to come down significantly.

Your high Ca is probably due to your salt since you are doing a lot of water changes. Many of them have weirdly high Ca and Mg for some reason. Worth testing a fresh batch of saltwater.
Click to expand...

I probably still will test every day, just because I'm anal-retentive like that and trying to learn the rules properly before I break them, haha.

I have been testing at the same time every day (+/- 10 minutes, trying to make it no more than that), and glad that I'm on the right track since my first course of action after this batch of fresh saltwater is finished mixing tomorrow morning is going to be testing the calcium.
 
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