Alk up and down with kalkwasser during the day

[SaracensRugby]

Ok, 315 gallon display, probably 400 gallons total. Tank has a handful of frags, nothing growing fast yet, and the tank is 6 months in. Fighting some uglies, so being patient with that.

Started dosing kalkwasser through a doser to keep up with alk/calc consumption. it is dosed in pretty evenly throughout the day, but my alk will still swing roughly .3dkh in a day (trident testing). Typically the highs are 6pm and 6am. Should I focus my dosing of kalkwasser during specific times of the day? Obviously I should tweak it from where it is now, but I am not even keeping up with evaporation right now. I know many people put it in your ATO, but not sure that would keep my numbers steady.

Thoughts/advice?

 

[homer1475]

So your highs I would assume is just before lights on, and as your lights go off?

Typical of photosynthesis. As your corals are using the light for food, they are using more elements to grow.

If it's only a .3dkh swing consistently, I wouldn't adjust a thing(Meaning if your starting at say 8.3, then throughout the day you drop to 8.0, then back to 8.3 at 6pm).

I personally think to much testing(minimum if 4 alk tests a day is excessive IMO), makes you chase numbers. There is a very easy way to adjust the tridents testing schedule so it does as little, or as many as you want. I run one with 2 alk, and 1 cal/mag test a day. Very easy to reprogram once you know how.

 

[SaracensRugby]

Gotcha. So really, I should keep my dosing to lights on time then right? I feel like this is a nube question I knew years ago, and it fell out of my head.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I don't think a swing of 0.3 dKH is any concern, but dosing more during the day and less at night will help stabilize alk more (and destabilize pH more).