Surfbum311
Active Member
Hello, first post here, so this will be my intro post, as well as some questions on my tank chemistry. I'm fairly new to the reefing game, but I am loving it thus far. In may, I started a build with a 40 breeder and 20L sump from petco's dollar per gallon sale. Budget friendly way to get a reef tank going, I thought to myself.. LOL. As I delved deeper into the build I soon realized those were the cheapest items I would buy throughout the process.
Fast forward 3 months, and Ive got a tank full of nice looking rock, a pair of clowns, tailspot blenny, cleaner shrimp, and around 20 or so assorted frags of softies, lps, a few monti caps, and a few birdsnest corals, along with a few hitch-hikers who got in somehow (I dip everything). Everything is seemingly thriving, but I feel I have an underlying issue that I need to figure out.
Up until about a month ago, my levels remained fairly stable, and any alkalinity or calcium that were being used were being easily replenished with weekly 10% water changes. Then, around the last week of July, I took a 5 day vacation. When I returned my Alk had dropped from 9 dkh to 5.5, but my calcium was still where it usually stayed, around 430-440. I immediately did a water change, a little larger than usual, around 10 gallons, so about 20% of total volume. This brought my alkalinity up to around 6-6.5 if I recall correctly. I then started dosing kalk through my ato in hopes it would slowly bring my levels back where I wanted them. Didn't work. After a few days, calcium was near 500 ppm and Alk was at 7. At that point I ditched the kalk, and started dosing small amounts of baking soda and brought my dkh back up to 9 over the course of about 3-4 days. I started testing daily, and noted that my tank was using close to 1dkh of alkalinity per day, with little to no day to day change in calcium.
So for the past month, I have been dosing solely to maintain alkalinity at 9.5 dkh, and my calcium has stayed between 480-500. I'm using reef crystals. I just tested a fresh mix at 1.025 sg and its testing at 9 dkh alkalinity and 540 ppm calcium, which is pretty far off from the advertised levels. I'm using red sea pro test kits. I'll also add that I started with Red sea salt (blue bucket) to begin with and switched to reef crystals shortly before noticing these issues. It was also around the time I started adding corals, so it could be a coincedence.
I guess I'm just wondering if it's normal for my tank to be using up alkalinity so quickly, while calcium is stable day to day without dosing. I've been doing some reading on the relationship between Alk and Calcium, but it's a bit hard for me to grasp for some reason. Any insight is much appreciated. I'll leave you guys with a few crappy phone pics of my tank.
Fast forward 3 months, and Ive got a tank full of nice looking rock, a pair of clowns, tailspot blenny, cleaner shrimp, and around 20 or so assorted frags of softies, lps, a few monti caps, and a few birdsnest corals, along with a few hitch-hikers who got in somehow (I dip everything). Everything is seemingly thriving, but I feel I have an underlying issue that I need to figure out.
Up until about a month ago, my levels remained fairly stable, and any alkalinity or calcium that were being used were being easily replenished with weekly 10% water changes. Then, around the last week of July, I took a 5 day vacation. When I returned my Alk had dropped from 9 dkh to 5.5, but my calcium was still where it usually stayed, around 430-440. I immediately did a water change, a little larger than usual, around 10 gallons, so about 20% of total volume. This brought my alkalinity up to around 6-6.5 if I recall correctly. I then started dosing kalk through my ato in hopes it would slowly bring my levels back where I wanted them. Didn't work. After a few days, calcium was near 500 ppm and Alk was at 7. At that point I ditched the kalk, and started dosing small amounts of baking soda and brought my dkh back up to 9 over the course of about 3-4 days. I started testing daily, and noted that my tank was using close to 1dkh of alkalinity per day, with little to no day to day change in calcium.
So for the past month, I have been dosing solely to maintain alkalinity at 9.5 dkh, and my calcium has stayed between 480-500. I'm using reef crystals. I just tested a fresh mix at 1.025 sg and its testing at 9 dkh alkalinity and 540 ppm calcium, which is pretty far off from the advertised levels. I'm using red sea pro test kits. I'll also add that I started with Red sea salt (blue bucket) to begin with and switched to reef crystals shortly before noticing these issues. It was also around the time I started adding corals, so it could be a coincedence.
I guess I'm just wondering if it's normal for my tank to be using up alkalinity so quickly, while calcium is stable day to day without dosing. I've been doing some reading on the relationship between Alk and Calcium, but it's a bit hard for me to grasp for some reason. Any insight is much appreciated. I'll leave you guys with a few crappy phone pics of my tank.
