Reef nutrition

Very low alk…

MarcosDelgado0

MarcosDelgado0

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Alright guys. Total noob moment here. Basically I ran out of reagent so I got lazy and stopped testing for like over a month. I’ve been doing the same amount of AFR consistently but I will admit I’ve added corals and didn’t increase the dose. I bought reagent and did a test today and my alk is at 5.8 dKH… I didn’t even know it could get that low. My corals still seem happy? Have had no losses and everything’s opened up. I do only have torches/hammers/zoas mostly, other than a golden rod and a monti. I know the saying nothing good happens fast so I’m planning to increase dosage slowly to raise alk back up but in what time span should I increase so I don’t have a “spike”?
 
Invictus said:
How big is your tank and what is your current daily doseage of AFR?
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It’s the 50 Gallon Low Boy with a 34 Gallon Sump. Probably 75 gallons total water volume system. I think the minimum is 5ml/26 gallons. I had done daily testing before and starting dosing 25ml daily and that gave me a stable all around 9dKH. I’ve been doing that same 25ml consistently, but I have added coral without increasing dosage. I didn’t think they’d consume that much more
 
5.8 is too low but not really dangerously low. 7.0 is normal for reefs in the wild. Your corals are ok likely because the change was slow. Just add more and let it drift upwards. You want it raise no more than about 0.5 dKH a day (you can do faster but don’t need to). I’d just start dosing 30 ml and see how it goes for a couple days, then 35 ml, etc.
 
More coral, but also as your corals are growing more successfully it will continue to require more. That’s the difficulty with AFR and how expensive it is; starts out not so bad and then before you know it you are dosing 2x as much as you started with. (I am up to 18ml/day AFR for a 45 gallon).

If I was you I would increase to 28ml/day and do an immediate and daily 5ml booster dose to try and get you back to an acceptable range.
 
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JVU said:
5.8 is too low but not really dangerously low. 7.0 is normal for reefs in the wild. Your corals are ok likely because the change was slow. Just add more and let it drift upwards. You want it raise no more than about 0.5 dKH a day (you can do faster but don’t need to). I’d just start dosing 30 ml and see how it goes for a couple days, then 35 ml, etc.
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JVU said:
To put 5.8 in perspective, you are closer to normal values on a reef now than you were when you had 9.0. In the hobby most people keep their dKH artificially high.
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Thanks John, that eases my mind a little. I saw 5.8 pop up and I panicked lol. I’ve never seen it that low. Thankfully I caught it before my coral started showing signs of distress. Will slowly increase
 
Invictus said:
More coral, but also as your corals are growing more successfully it will continue to require more. That’s the difficulty with AFR and how expensive it is; starts out not so bad and then before you know it you are dosing 2x as much as you started with. (I am up to 17ml/day AFR for a 45 gallon).

If I was you I would increase to 28ml/day and do an immediate and daily 5ml booster dose to try and get you back to an acceptable range.
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Do you use the powder or the liquid? I bought the 800mg powder and barely finishing up my first liter bottle I made. I honestly thought I’d go through it faster. Although if I ever ended up needing to dose the max amount for my tank (75ml daily), I’d go through a whole liter in two weeks, so I see what you’re saying :/
 
Tested again after having skimmer back on for 1/2hr. I had it off for 2hrs before testing because I added phyto. Don’t know if that would affect ph/all that much. Something I noticed was my calc is way out of balance. Is it possible for corals to consume more alk than calcium? My Hanna calcium checker was blinking 600 so it’s more than 600ppm… Looks like I need to buy something to dose alk separately so I don’t keep increasing calcium if it’s not being consumed. Also calibrated Hanna salinity checker. It used to read 1.026 before calibration, now reads 1.024. Not too low but I’ll slowly increase it back up
 

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MarcosDelgado0 said:
Tested again after having skimmer back on for 1/2hr. I had it off for 2hrs before testing because I added phyto. Don’t know if that would affect ph/all that much. Something I noticed was my calc is way out of balance. Is it possible for corals to consume more alk than calcium? My Hanna calcium checker was blinking 600 so it’s more than 600ppm… Looks like I need to buy something to dose alk separately so I don’t keep increasing calcium if it’s not being consumed. Also calibrated Hanna salinity checker. It used to read 1.026 before calibration, now reads 1.024. Not too low but I’ll slowly increase it back up
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I use afr, dosing about 5/7mil by hand daily I also have esv 2 part and esv magnesium for finer adjustments only when needed as you mentioned your current issue.

I have a fair amount of sps, I would say my main tank now that I moved 80% of my hammers to the other tank has more sps than anything else now. In the 65 i never dosed anything in it so far but esv alkalinity part. I think only from observation lps can drink alkalinity, sps looks to take more calcium.

At one point I had really low mag in main tank but once i was able to specifically adjust it back into range it's been holding steady since than so I imagine it takes. Much longer to deplete. That depeletion happened mainly when alkalinity was low and calcium high. So also possibly that having one out of range makes others harder to keep in range as well. Just my observations and thoughts from watching my tests/ dosing trends. - not expert or scientific by any means.
 
MarcosDelgado0 said:
Tested again after having skimmer back on for 1/2hr. I had it off for 2hrs before testing because I added phyto. Don’t know if that would affect ph/all that much. Something I noticed was my calc is way out of balance. Is it possible for corals to consume more alk than calcium? My Hanna calcium checker was blinking 600 so it’s more than 600ppm… Looks like I need to buy something to dose alk separately so I don’t keep increasing calcium if it’s not being consumed. Also calibrated Hanna salinity checker. It used to read 1.026 before calibration, now reads 1.024. Not too low but I’ll slowly increase it back up
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I watched a brs dosing video a couple weeks back, they were talking about balling method, 2 part, and all for reef. They were saying most tanks consume more alk than cal, very few consume more cal than alk
 
It would also be interesting seeing where the rest of your parameters are. Since your cal was high, but salinity was low, your mag may be a bit low too?
 
Not a proud moment but on 9/21 I hit 1.8 meq/L. I would not have know unless I tested, the tank looked normal, even the trickier corals. Upped the lime water dose (I should take better notes than screenshots lol...) and got to 2.4 by the following week. Last Saturday back to a more comfortable range- 3.075 or 8.6dkh.

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Retest the calc to make sure it’s not an error as I can’t see how alk can be that low and calc that high. Especially if you are dosing only AFR. I can see that happening with two part or other balling methods..

For reference I am dosing 14 ml of AFR and 600 ML of kalk daily. Now my DKH is around 9.3. Prior to to kalk I was dosing 22 ml of AFR for a DKH of 7.x.

I buy the 1600 mg powder of AFR. Even at the larger dose -it lasted me just under a year. The liquid is way too expensive..
 
MarcosDelgado0 said:
Tested again after having skimmer back on for 1/2hr. I had it off for 2hrs before testing because I added phyto. Don’t know if that would affect ph/all that much. Something I noticed was my calc is way out of balance. Is it possible for corals to consume more alk than calcium? My Hanna calcium checker was blinking 600 so it’s more than 600ppm… Looks like I need to buy something to dose alk separately so I don’t keep increasing calcium if it’s not being consumed. Also calibrated Hanna salinity checker. It used to read 1.026 before calibration, now reads 1.024. Not too low but I’ll slowly increase it back up
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Many tanks consume more alk than Ca, it’s quite common. You can correct it by adding alk only with carbonate or bicarbonate, commonly used in 2-part dosing regimens. Spread out over lots of small doses.

BUT the huge discrepancy between your alk and Ca makes me think there could be a measurement error with one or both. The drift upwards of Ca is very slow. So unless you haven’t tested for a year or something with minimal water changes, I doubt the numbers are real.

Also with your salinity being a little low (if real) then your true Ca is even higher, which I really doubt.

I recommend having someone you trust test your water. Maybe your LFS.
 
JVU said:
Many tanks consume more alk than Ca, it’s quite common. You can correct it by adding alk only with carbonate or bicarbonate, commonly used in 2-part dosing regimens. Spread out over lots of small doses.

BUT the huge discrepancy between your alk and Ca makes me think there could be a measurement error with one or both. The drift upwards of Ca is very slow. So unless you haven’t tested for a year or something with minimal water changes, I doubt the numbers are real.

Also with your salinity being a little low (if real) then your true Ca is even higher, which I really doubt.

I recommend having someone you trust test your water. Maybe your LFS.
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I’m going to send an ICP in. My LFS is Neptune but they do the Aqua Spin test thingy which I don’t really trust. I’m going to test everything again today. I’m very careful about following the instructions so I don’t think it’s user error, unless it’s the actual checker itself. I even used deionized water instead of RODI for the calcium test kit like I used to
 
MarcosDelgado0 said:
I’m going to send an ICP in. My LFS is Neptune but they do the Aqua Spin test thingy which I don’t really trust. I’m going to test everything again today. I’m very careful about following the instructions so I don’t think it’s user error, unless it’s the actual checker itself. I even used deionized water instead of RODI for the calcium test kit like I used to
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I got the hanna same as you, salifert and now redsea one if you wanna come by one day just let me know
 
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