Alk Emergency How Fast can I lower Alk?

[Asonitez]

So I made a huge mistake,

Over the course of around 5/7 days my alk has been rising and is currently sitting at around 9.63 to 10.8 dkh. I bumped my calcium reactors bubble size knob and didn’t notice causing my carbon doser to become extremely efficient in lowering alk. Coupled with my 68ml drop rate caused a bit of alk spike.

I’m a low nutrient system so this high alk is causing me to lose some sps namely smooth skinned acros. My indicator corals started slowly doing some polyp bailout.

How fast can I lower my alk back to the mid 8 through water changes?

I know raising alk is bad but I’m thinking I can at least safely lower it at least 1 dkh down to the low 9 high 8?

I have other systems namely softy systems running alk in the 7.5 that I can swap water with to dilute things.

I have 30 gallons of fresh saltwater mixing up (Red Sea blue bucket.)

 

[Crabs McJones]

I would do a water change with lower alk to help bring it down, but you don't want more than 1 - 1.5 dkh a day change.

 

[Mastiffsrule]

Agreed, it rose up quick, dropping it fast may subject to further stress.

 

[Flippers4pups]

I would do a water change with lower alk to help bring it down, but you don't want more than 1 - 1.5 dkh a day change.

Agreed, raising and lowering would be the same rules.

 

[Kvnsu]

Do small partial water changes, and yes decrease it slowly as others have stated.

 

[Asonitez]

It took about 7 days to rise from 8.5 to 10.5/11 so I figure a water swap with another tank that has aged water and lower alk should stint the bleeding.

I almost cried just now

I just can’t win my return pump died 4 days before reefa, then one of my t5 ballasts died 2. Days before.

I got 2gs in reefbrites and radion and Mp40’s to go on this tank and ugh this is so stressful.

 

[Asonitez]

I should have known something was up. My PH which hovers around 7.9 to 8.2 with 2 airline tubes outside and a big refugium has strangely been around 7.8 to 7.7 which is probably because my ca/rx was over producing.

 

[jda]

I think that you will do more harm lowering by hand than just letting it lower by it's self. Low alk and very low building blocks will cause acropora to burn tips while growing too fast, but not lose the whole colony - is burnt tips what is happening? If not, then it could be something else.

If your pH is lower, then you mostly likely did have too much excess co2 leaving the reactor. A well-tuned reactor does not have much impact on tank pH, like you had before.

You can use muratic acid to lower dKh in fresh salt mix, but it takes a day to let the pH come back up. You could lower the mix dKh to 4 or 5 and it will not take as much. Gallons * desired dKh drop * .123 = mls of muratic acid to use. You can add it to the tank too, but it really drops the pH and this can be dangerous unless you got really slow (like 1 drop at a time) and really monitor the pH.

 

[SeaDweller]

Seachem acid buffer can drop dkh, but just like HCl like jda suggested, it drops ph quickly too. Might be better to do low alk water changes or to let it come down naturally.