Neptune Aquatics

High daily alkalinity consumption - need advice

tribbitt

tribbitt

Supporting Member
BARcard
Recently I did some measuring and found my tank consumes around 4dkH/day (up from 2dkH/day 7 months ago)

If I do something to irritate my corals and alkalinity consumption dips by even a little bit, alk could spike really quickly. Is there a way to avoid this which isn't daily testing or spending lots of money on automation? Alk consumption can only increase over time and I'm worried it could lead to crash if anything happens
 
tribbitt said:
Recently I did some measuring and found my tank consumes around 4dkH/day (up from 2dkH/day 7 months ago)

If I do something to irritate my corals and alkalinity consumption dips by even a little bit, alk could spike really quickly. Is there a way to avoid this which isn't daily testing or spending lots of money on automation? Alk consumption can only increase over time and I'm worried it could lead to crash if anything happens
Click to expand...
More water volume/bigger tank lol
 
Any more background on what you are dosing, how often, how much and any changes you made since the last measure? Doubling consumption in 7 months does not seem outrageous, have seen quite a few tanks that have 4 dkh daily.
 
Alexander1312 said:
Any more background on what you are dosing, how often, how much and any changes you made since the last measure? Doubling consumption in 7 months does not seem outrageous, have seen quite a few tanks that have 4 dkh daily.
Click to expand...
I dose baking soda + calcium chloride as DIY 2 part. How much is harder: I can tell you the volume but I mix using measuring spoons and not with scale so it might not line up (how packed etc). What I do know is that one recent sleep deprived night I tested alk, and seeing it was low (6dkH) decided to manually dose 1 day's worth of dose. When I tested an hour later it read at 10dkH.

So, I know daily dose increases alkalinity by 4dkH, and also that I shouldn't make decisions without a good sleep

Changes? Just have a lot more coral now.
 
Last edited:
Sell some coral, get some money for college?

I think you're approaching the successful reefer's "not much actual water in my tank" phase that makes having a crash more likely (think Sanjay's situation). When you're riding the edge of failure, even a slight lapse in observation might put you in a bad situation.

You could do a big reset, but I know an upgrade isn't possible. An alk auto tester might help, but that's big $.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top