2Part Dosing problems

WVU2RVA · Aug 24, 2018

First, I am new to reefing. My tank is a year old 210G and well stocked with mixed corals, 3 large tangs, Trigger and several small species.
I have had great success so far with keeping corals healthy and slowly growing.
However, it is a CONSTANT battle keeping up with Alkalinity and Calcium - beginning to seem unattainable with 2 Part dosing. Magnesium is always 1400-1500.

Alkalinity: Doing large water changes, 60 gallons I can get the levels to 8.5dkH and with 5 days its at 6dkH no matter how much I keep increasing my DOS ml per day
Calcium: same as before 440...…….5 days later its 370.

- My DOS has been calibrated
- I have had local shops run same test, same results
- the 5 gallon mixing jugs are mixed correctly and I have tested the contents of each - off the charts

Brief setup:
Neptune Apex
210G Display
75G Sump (half of which is refugium)
10" Reef Octo Skimmer
Neptune DOS pumps, BRS 2 PART
300ml Alk per day (spread out)
300ml Cal per day (spread out)
(2) Neptune WAV
(2) Kessil AP700 (12 hour dawn to dusk)
(2) T5 Purple Plus (7 hours per day)
(2) T5 Blue Actinic (7Hours per day)

Feed once every day. Once a month make a large batch of prepared food, freeze small cubes of food, thaw one every day.

30G water change every Sunday with Fritz Red Box

When will the tank stop sucking these up or do I need to move onto other methods of dosing eg. calcium reactors, kalkwasser, manually (this isn't the life I want), small water changes automatically everyday.
WHAT DO I DO? Is dosing 400 ml of each a real thing????

Happy to share more info. Thank You

AquamanE · Aug 25, 2018

300ml of each seems high to me for a 1 year old tank, but glad you are dosing EQUALLY. Many make the mistake not to.

60 gal WC how often?

Ide ask Randy Holmes Farley in the chemistry forum. AND make sure to read as many of his articles as you can. It will make your reefing life easier.

Crabs McJones · Aug 25, 2018

Welcome to R2R! Do you know what your daily consumption is? What test kit are you using to determine your levels?
#WelcometoR2R

GoVols · Aug 25, 2018

WVU2RVA said:
Alkalinity: Doing large water changes, 60 gallons I can get the levels to 8.5dkH and with 5 days its at 6dkH no matter how much I keep increasing my DOS ml per day
Calcium: same as before 440...…….5 days later its 370.

Are you for sure that your not overdosing your cal and alk.

If your over the daily limit of the product that you use. Your ions will bind together and your #'s will drop, due to precipitation.

And... your cal and alk should not be dosed at the same time.

Just tossing it out there, and trying to help.

WVU2RVA · Aug 25, 2018

Thank you both, I may repost this in the chemistry forums.

I use Hanna ppm for Alk
Red Sea for everything else.

The last time I took a week to test daily consumption was when I setup the 5 gallon buckets as dosing containers - mid June. I have not added any new corals or fish since then.
mid June is as follows:
Alk .45 per day
Cal 17ppm +/- per day

The tank seems to be consuming more now than less than 7 weeks ago

WVU2RVA · Aug 25, 2018

I have read some articles about over dosing and ultimately counteracting what my intentions are. I attempted to start over with dosing mid June but it seemed to keep climbing in needs. The dosing pumps are setup to dose separately throughout the day.

WVU2RVA · Aug 25, 2018

Another note:
I have located the pumps and containers so that the tubing lines are as short s possible from but air always seems to collect in the tubes over time. There has been debate whether this is effecting accurate dosing.

I did a 35 gallon water change last night and got the tank up to 7dkH and calcium at 390.
I understand testing the parameters at the same time every day is ideal when trying to fine tune the system.

Therefore, I am going to do a large water change, dose manually and get the system up to around the 8.4-8.8/430-450 range tomorrow. then take the pumps off line and monitor the system for 4 days and see where we are Thursday. I'll report back and hope someone here can make sense of the numbers.

boxed_reef · Aug 25, 2018

are you staggering when alk and cal are dosed? Like alk on the hour, calcium on the half hour? If both are being dosed at the same time they will just precipitate out.

WVU2RVA · Aug 25, 2018

Yes,
However, after viewing my Apec Fusion schedule maybe there needs time in between the dosing.
Alk is shown in orange and Cal is shown in blue.
Allowing 30 minutes between the doses would benefit the effectiveness from everyone has mentioned.

Huskymaniac · Aug 25, 2018

Was having similar issues and ended up using a cal reactor. I think what was happening with me was I was dosing into my sump and whether it was low flow or not was getting a lot of precipitation. I was going to start over dosing directly into the display nut changed my mind. Havent had any issues since changing over to the reactor.

WVU2RVA · Aug 25, 2018

I changed the schedule to add time for absorption. Likewise, I can move the discharge of the pumps to a higher flow area than their existing location. I'll do that, monitor throughout the week and see where we are Thursday

WVU2RVA · Aug 28, 2018

Anyone who has commented or checked in on this thread may be happy to know that after inserting a 30 minute window between my dosing intervals, both levels are climbing very quickly. However, at the rate at which dkH and Calcium are rising, within a few more days we would be a scenario where my tank is overdosing. Just today alk has climbed from 8.2 at noon, 8.4 at 6 and is now hovering around 8.7. Therefore, I think I have found the culprit in this saga and need to correct the dosing so we stay in the sweet spot.
Thanks for everyone's comments.
Everything seems happy for now.