ZoWhat
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- Feb 23, 2014
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- Cincinnati Ohio
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- Ohio
No one seems to mention Alk poisoning (super high dKH) if you dont know what you're doing with 2part solution!
I tried dosing 2part in EQUAL AMTS without fully checking what my true uptake of the 2-elements were daily or even weekly.
"Uptake" meaning = the amount of the element (calc or alk) absorbed by your corals daily/weekly....that in turn needs an EXACT amount of the particular 2part solution to replenish without OVER-REPLENISHING!
I should have known better.....:mad:..... but got lazy and just threw in EQUAL amts of 2-part while only testing those elements every 2-weeks.
It didn't take but a short amt of time for my Alk to hit a dangerously high 16+dKH ....because my tank is mostly zoas and palys with almost nothing in the way of SPS.
So my Alk uptake is hardly anything. Zoas and Palys must not hardly use any Alk in their metabolism
My laziness in just throwing in equal dosing of the 2part was poisoning my tank on the Alk side of dosing.
It finally nearly wiped my corals out with my dKH peaking at 17.4 before I did a 50% waterchange in panic mode
Luckily zoas and palys can take a high Alk for short extended periods of time.
So my advice is if you start 2-parting you should:
1) know generally what your daily/weekly uptake of Calcium and Alkalinity are....and adjust accordingly. Not a good idea to just "wing it" throwing in equal ml amounts...but use specific ml amts of part1 and part2 to separately keep Calc and Alk in range
2) if you 2part, testing for those elements should be an ongoing every-3-day regiment. Uptake values change over time and your dKH can jump over 12 before you know it. I definitely would not find your uptake-values over 1-2 months and then get lazy and stick to those dosing amts for months going forward.
Always test, test test, thruout your 2part regiment
.
I tried dosing 2part in EQUAL AMTS without fully checking what my true uptake of the 2-elements were daily or even weekly.
"Uptake" meaning = the amount of the element (calc or alk) absorbed by your corals daily/weekly....that in turn needs an EXACT amount of the particular 2part solution to replenish without OVER-REPLENISHING!
I should have known better.....:mad:..... but got lazy and just threw in EQUAL amts of 2-part while only testing those elements every 2-weeks.
It didn't take but a short amt of time for my Alk to hit a dangerously high 16+dKH ....because my tank is mostly zoas and palys with almost nothing in the way of SPS.
So my Alk uptake is hardly anything. Zoas and Palys must not hardly use any Alk in their metabolism
My laziness in just throwing in equal dosing of the 2part was poisoning my tank on the Alk side of dosing.
It finally nearly wiped my corals out with my dKH peaking at 17.4 before I did a 50% waterchange in panic mode
Luckily zoas and palys can take a high Alk for short extended periods of time.
So my advice is if you start 2-parting you should:
1) know generally what your daily/weekly uptake of Calcium and Alkalinity are....and adjust accordingly. Not a good idea to just "wing it" throwing in equal ml amounts...but use specific ml amts of part1 and part2 to separately keep Calc and Alk in range
2) if you 2part, testing for those elements should be an ongoing every-3-day regiment. Uptake values change over time and your dKH can jump over 12 before you know it. I definitely would not find your uptake-values over 1-2 months and then get lazy and stick to those dosing amts for months going forward.
Always test, test test, thruout your 2part regiment
.
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