Reef nutrition

(Maybe) the source of reefing problems

tribbitt

tribbitt

Supporting Member
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I've been a little troubled with coral coloration (meh, not bad but definitely not where I want it) and growth (quite slow). I believe I may have found one of the culprits.

Under the guidance of my reef teacher I tested daily drop in alkalinity. In the past, I thought it didn't matter because "each week the levels are the same, my dosing is fine". But apparently not.

Right now, everything is irritated from being rearranged/fragged and the tank *STILL* manages to consume 1.7dkH a day, so I assume when things are happy they consume much more. I only dose 2x a day to maintain a general flat trend. This means that twice daily, my alk is spiking by 1 dkH, probably more when I adjust for corals being happy. Big alk spikes, twice a day cannot be good for the corals.

I just adjusted it to dose 4x a day, and will probably go to 8x when I have time to mess with the doser more.


Speaking of alk dosing: I want to switch from baking soda to a high-pH alternative. Does anybody have a suggestion for a cheap, safe alternative? And also a way to convert from one to the other (e.g. 5mL saturated baking soda = 3mL saturated XYZ)?

I can't imagine a high-pH additive being worse than a low-pH one so I'd like to try it out
 
I venture into kalk to get the ph boast. Not sure which doser you’re using but most have 12 or more number of dose a day. I would use the max.
 
I second the ph stability over number of doses of alk per se -although if you end up dosing kalk that will def change the number of doses.

I am a recent kalk convert and I dose overnight with a combo of all for reef (AFR). So far
It has been working pretty well thus far. Colors in the coral look pretty decent -I think my growth in my sps of late have been hampered by a higher PO4 (.6) that I can tell has slowed down the alk consumption a bit. My next project is dosing in diluted lanthium chloride.

Kalk is relatively cheap just an issue of storage space! Be advised while it’s great for CA/ALK it does not contain magnesium or other trace elements so that needs to be taken into acct. AFR off sets that- also given how AFR works I simply dose it all within 1/2 hour.

This works for me but I am sure there are numerous other paths.
 
I used to dose kalk, but the issue of potency, the stirring, the really-bad-to-inhale dust, all make me shy away from it. I'm not sure if other alkalinity solutions lose potency as well, but I know limewater is a big offender.

Magnesium I dose separately, trace elements I use chaetogro and a couple other misc bottles to tide me over between water changes (like eating gummy vitamins with a bad diet to be "healthy") - I don't have money for repeat ICPs or all the bottles so I don't know the landscape of trace in my tank.

Coral reefer said:
I’d focus on ph more than just alk
Stable alk is good. Dosing smaller amounts more often is good. I’ve always used soda ash.
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I don't think my current additive does much for pH. It's just baking soda and water, which has a slight pH lowering effect, so there shouldn't be pH spikes.

Is soda ash bad to breathe in? And is it 1:1 with baking soda, dosing wise? I saturate water with baking soda so I don't know how I would convert that over to soda ash
 
I think alk swings being bad is kind of a myth, unless they are huge. I dosed all of my ESV at night for a while as an experiment, and saw a good 2 DKH swing every day - and some very rapid growth during this period. Chris Meckley runs his entire farming operation focused more on PH stability than alk, and his alk swings around some also. Maybe there are some other components at play in specific tanks that minimize the impact of alk swings, but I'm very skeptical they are all that harmful. Alk isn't even a "thing" for one thing, it's just the buffering capacity of the water.

Anyway, to answer your question - ESV is fantastic stuff and offers a nice PH boost. It's one of the more expensive options but wouldn't be a huge deal in a tank your size.
 
tribbitt said:
I used to dose kalk, but the issue of potency, the stirring, the really-bad-to-inhale dust, all make me shy away from it. I'm not sure if other alkalinity solutions lose potency as well, but I know limewater is a big offender.

Magnesium I dose separately, trace elements I use chaetogro and a couple other misc bottles to tide me over between water changes (like eating gummy vitamins with a bad diet to be "healthy") - I don't have money for repeat ICPs or all the bottles so I don't know the landscape of trace in my tank.



I don't think my current additive does much for pH. It's just baking soda and water, which has a slight pH lowering effect, so there shouldn't be pH spikes.

Is soda ash bad to breathe in? And is it 1:1 with baking soda, dosing wise? I saturate water with baking soda so I don't know how I would convert that over to soda ash
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I’ve never used baking soda. I put a certain amount of soda ash into a gal of water. I forget exactly the amount, I wanna say 386 grams, but I’d have to look it up to be sure.
I do the same white calcium chloride (407 g I think)
And mg chloride and mg sulfate.
The easy way is like @derek_SR said with esv or the pre measured pouches from BRS that will mix up a gal for you. A little digital scale is cheap and saves some packaging waste of the pouches plus buying in bulk saves some money is why I weigh and mix things myself.
 
derek_SR said:
I think alk swings being bad is kind of a myth, unless they are huge. I dosed all of my ESV at night for a while as an experiment, and saw a good 2 DKH swing every day - and some very rapid growth during this period. Chris Meckley runs his entire farming operation focused more on PH stability than alk, and his alk swings around some also. Maybe there are some other components at play in specific tanks that minimize the impact of alk swings, but I'm very skeptical they are all that harmful. Alk isn't even a "thing" for one thing, it's just the buffering capacity of the water.

Anyway, to answer your question - ESV is fantastic stuff and offers a nice PH boost. It's one of the more expensive options but wouldn't be a huge deal in a tank your size.
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Oh interesting. It's hard for me to track anything other than broad scale trends, especially daily swings are difficult to find, so this info is pretty cool. And with my limited understanding of the alkalinity buffering system, it makes some sense that stable pH is the crux of this whole thing.

According to google, soda ash has double the potency of baking soda, and according to wikipedia solubility curve I've got 365 grams of sodium bicarbonate dissolved per gallon. Soda ash can dissolve way more in water, which may be useful for making a more potent mix for bigger tanks, but with the resolution of my doser I'd rather dose more liquid and be less off, so i'll dilute it a little. It won't be saturated

So I hope my thinking is correct: I'll mix up a batch of soda ash, with 365 grams of it per gallon. This will make a solution 2x as potent as my current baking soda mix, which is also 365g/gal. Then I just dose 1/2 as much. And maybe split into more doses, but given @derek_SR's experience I don't know if that's the culprit anymore

I assume all brands of soda ash are basically the same
Anyone have recommendation for cheap good kitchen scale? I don't do much baking so I don't have one
 
tribbitt said:
Oh interesting. It's hard for me to track anything other than broad scale trends, especially daily swings are difficult to find, so this info is pretty cool. And with my limited understanding of the alkalinity buffering system, it makes some sense that stable pH is the crux of this whole thing.

According to google, soda ash has double the potency of baking soda, and according to wikipedia solubility curve I've got 365 grams of sodium bicarbonate dissolved per gallon. Soda ash can dissolve way more in water, which may be useful for making a more potent mix for bigger tanks, but with the resolution of my doser I'd rather dose more liquid and be less off, so i'll dilute it a little. It won't be saturated

So I hope my thinking is correct: I'll mix up a batch of soda ash, with 365 grams of it per gallon. This will make a solution 2x as potent as my current baking soda mix, which is also 365g/gal. Then I just dose 1/2 as much. And maybe split into more doses, but given @derek_SR's experience I don't know if that's the culprit anymore

I assume all brands of soda ash are basically the same
Anyone have recommendation for cheap good kitchen scale? I don't do much baking so I don't have one
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What are you using to determine that your growth is slow? Just visuals or low alk consumption? Has it slowed down recently or just always been slow?
 
derek_SR said:
What are you using to determine that your growth is slow? Just visuals or low alk consumption? Has it slowed down recently or just always been slow?
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Visuals. I take too many pictures of them, and it's evident over the course of 6 months that my growth is maybe a few percent of the growth of some coral gurus I have. They grow coral from palm size to hand size in a few months. In those same months I'm lucky to have a new branch

Also every once in a while, something will click and corals will grow and I'll be happy. And they grow at an insane (to me) pace, and then something happens and they stall. In the one year I've had my tank, not much has grown, and my coral friends have turned frags into colonies

I'm sure it's something I could be doing better, somewhere in the process
 
I think it’s exactly as you obvserved. When things happen and the pace stalls it take a long time to start back up again. The key is keeping that momentum going and avoiding the stalls. Not always obvious what causes them, but this is a key next step in your learning curve. Figuring out the changes to make to keep the ship going consistently rather than slowing down and having recover often.
I picture it as a giant ocean liner. It doesn’t start turning right away when the captain makes a steering change. It takes awhile to course correct. If they have to slow down it take awhile and a lot of energy to speed back up.
 
Coral reefer said:
I think it’s exactly as you obvserved. When things happen and the pace stalls it take a long time to start back up again. The key is keeping that momentum going and avoiding the stalls. Not always obvious what causes them, but this is a key next step in your learning curve. Figuring out the changes to make to keep the ship going consistently rather than slowing down and having recover often.
I picture it as a giant ocean liner. It doesn’t start turning right away when the captain makes a steering change. It takes awhile to course correct. If they have to slow down it take awhile and a lot of energy to speed back up.
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This is good advice, but I also wonder if some of the variation in growth is natural. My tank does the same thing - has fast growth periods and slow ones. I'm never quite sure if it's something I'm doing or did, or if it's just sort of how things are. Same way my kids have growth spurts then don't grow much for a while.

Just remember too to think about the big 3 in terms of water chemistry, flow, and lighting. If you do regular water changes your water chemistry is probably OK. You have to increase flow over time as your tank fills in - it really makes a big difference. Try cranking up the lighting and flow a bit - that's usually what I do :)
 
I don’t disagree that some variation is probably natural, what I’m mainly talking about is the times when it seems to stall almost completely, or maybe even has a partial bleaching or some tissue loss. It can take a surprisingly long time to start back up again ime. Although those issues are also natural…
 
derek_SR said:
This is good advice, but I also wonder if some of the variation in growth is natural. My tank does the same thing - has fast growth periods and slow ones. I'm never quite sure if it's something I'm doing or did, or if it's just sort of how things are. Same way my kids have growth spurts then don't grow much for a while.

Just remember too to think about the big 3 in terms of water chemistry, flow, and lighting. If you do regular water changes your water chemistry is probably OK. You have to increase flow over time as your tank fills in - it really makes a big difference. Try cranking up the lighting and flow a bit - that's usually what I do :)
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I'll experiment with better flow. Lighting should be OK on the corals that I want to grow. 300-450 par around the SPS. But it's older model lighting so I don't know if the spectrum is good (or if there's any meaningful difference between generations of lights).
 
I watched a video a long time ago that said that total water volume had an effect on growth rates. Seemed very speculative, but they mentioned some aquariums in china that I believe were around +100,000 gallon size, massive lights, etc, that had some great growth rates. Might be stability or something, I’m not sure, but seemed like it made sense
 
I would not use any high PH solution as this will just drive up precipitation risks and longer term issues from binding traces and phosphate which later come back into your tank in one go - unless your tank can take up everything instantly when dosed (wall to wall SPS might do that), which is in most cases unlikely.

Balling light (not regular balling) is what I use. I dose 100% of my daily alk in the first 30 minutes before lights turn on. If enjoying high PH readings gets you excited you can add a CO2 scrubber but over time and with the right room ventilation this should not be an issue and the tank would have good PH without the high PH solution ‘drug’ it needs daily to survive otherwise.
 
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