Alkalinity dropping even with increasing dosage.

[Joe Batt]

I use the Triton method, and recently my dosage has been going up and up as I struggled to even keep the Kh stable. In a 820 litre water volume, with a moderate amount of mixed corals the Kh daily has gone from around 1dKh up too 2.5 + in just a few days. It doesn’t make sense. There is no way my tank is using this amount. I try to run my tank around 7.7dKh.

I suspected a Mg or Ca imbalance yet they are 1350 and 440 respectively. I have a small power head on the area where the doser feeds. I moved where the doser is feeding and yet have the same problem. I can’t see any precipitation on pumps or solid sand....

I added a CaRx and it is increasing the dKh normally and indicating a daily usage of around 0.8dkh.

It’s all very strange.

 

[NY_Caveman]

I would double check the test kit first. Perhaps have an LFS test it, or if you have another kit. Are you near the end of a reagent? Which kit? I do not know a lot about Triton, but perhaps others will chime in.

 

[Gareth elliott]

There are a lot of things that at play besides coral uptake.

Large coraline growth, improperly mixed 2 part(triton arrives dry now right?), Precipitation.

Precipitation you can check your sand, large clumps sticking together is good sign a lot is forming calcium carbonate and falling out of the water column.

 

[Joe Batt]

I use the Alkatronic to test the dKh and I suspected it was out of whack. I compared their Alkatronic reading with a Salifert test and they were the same. The Alkatronic was showing a slow but steady drop.

As I say, there are no hard lumps in the sand.

With regard the Triton reagent, I am still using the liquid version so I didn’t mix it.

 

[Silver14SS]

Has your pH increased? Alk consumption will rise with pH.

 

[Joe Batt]

Nope it is around 8.2 and static. That is a huge increase in a week and just doesn’t make sense.

 

[PatW]

Hhmmmm. A 2.5 DKH uptake is quite a bit. I am getting about 2 on a big day and I have a bunch of growing SPS colonies. So I think that you can rule out corals. I doubt that coralline algae, snails, and corals could do it in your system from your description.

I guess you need to eliminate the obvious things. Your alk additive is more dilute that you think. Precipitation . And it sounds as if you have ruled out measurement error.

You wouldn’t happen to have a honking big clam in your tank?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Even soft coral tanks can use 2 dKH per day if coralline growth is good.

 

[Joe Batt]

This tank is only about 6 months old. It has some Coraline growth but not a good coverage. It is a mixed reef but has mainly frags with a few small SPS colonies. In total around 80 maximum.

I sat thinking what had changed, and all I could think of was that I had just moved to new 10L containers of Triton. They had been in the garage for a few months and when I decanted them into the dosing containers I hadn’t mixed them. I emptied the dosing containers and remixed them with their respective Triton mixture, then refilled the dosing containers and started again. The kH stabilised out nicely for 36 hours at around 7.7 dKh (daily dosage of 45.6ml) Late yesterday there was the start of the the now familiar drop. My dosetronic kicking in to add extra to the tank when the dKh fell below 7.5dKh. Today it really started to fall and, despite extra doses the dKh has continued to fall and has reached 7.3. The total dosage today since midnight last night is 75ml of Core 7, which really doesn’t make sense.

I checked the calibration of the pumps, it is spot on. I checked Ca an it is 420 with Mg at 1320 , so all in balance. I checked the Alkatronic dKh level against Salifert, again spot on. There is no precipitation, and the Triton mixtures are well mixed and there is a power head on the spot where the dosage enters the water.

I am at a loss. Why did it work for 36 hours and then suddenly start down the old path of steadily decreasing dKh. I cant think of anything else. I have run out of ideas........

Anyone?

 

[Silver14SS]

Have you ruled out air in the dosing lines or a variance between what is actually being dosed vs. what is programmed?

I added a Dosetronic to my Alkatronic, it's been rock steady. I had to adjust my old doser almost daily to keep Alk where I wanted per the Alkatronic's measurements. I think my old doser wasn't delivering the requested amounts, despite calibrating correctly.

 

[Joe Batt]

Have you ruled out air in the dosing lines or a variance between what is actually being dosed vs. what is programmed?

I added a Dosetronic to my Alkatronic, it's been rock steady. I had to adjust my old doser almost daily to keep Alk where I wanted per the Alkatronic's measurements. I think my old doser wasn't delivering the requested amounts, despite calibrating correctly.

I checked the dosetronic calibration, checked the output volume in use compared to what it said it was outputting and all correct. I too have had the dosetronic nailing the dkh previously.

 

[Silver14SS]

Sounds like you've been thorough in ruling out the more obvious stuff. My only other guess is an issue with the dosed product. Maybe try using a different alk solution to rule out one more variable?

Good luck sorting it out, thank you for posting the details of what you've already investigated

 

[Crabs McJones]

Has your pH increased? Alk consumption will rise with pH.

Good suggestion, I was going to say the same. My consumption fell almost 2 dkh a day when we had to close the windows from it being to hot outside. My ph dropped from 8.4-8.5 to now 7.9 - 8.1

 

[Joe Batt]

Nope pH in same range....... It just doesn’t makes sense.

 

[Joe Batt]

I brought my CaRx online yesterday evening and it is delivering around 0.5 dkh a day and holding the dKh level at 8dkh.

Something is very wrong with the dosing somewhere and I cant figure it out

 

[Martin Kuhn]

What about 2x checking the amount of your doser output?

Let it flow into a glass and measure how much is really doses, then/ afterwards dose it to your tank

 

[BeejReef]

You're running a much, MUCH, more advanced setup than me. FWIW, same happened to me. Alk/Calc demand went from moderate to out of control and well beyond what one would expect on a 4 mo tank. I don't know how I overdosed it initially, but in my case, that was the problem. Too much supplementation lead to precipitation. Tiny white crystals started to appear on the rock and in the sand. It was barely noticeable. The interweb tells me that these crystals aggressively suck further calcium and alkalinity out of the water. In my case, the solution was to stop supplementing entirely for a painful 3-4 days. Mag wasn't the issue, but I punched it up to 1450 anyhow and began dosing calcium and alkalinity very slowly again after letting it bottom out at 6.5 dkh. After about a week, I'm back to 9.5 dkh and a daily alk demand of .9dkh, which seems reasonable to me.

No idea if this is your issue, but a BRS vid I watched labeled this is the "most common" scenario leading to apparent runaway alkalinity demand.

 

[MARK M. DAVIS]

Your triton solution is likely bad. You should be higher in ph when dosing a lot of alk

 

[bar|none]

Are you sure your dosers are actually dosing what you think they are? 2 things happened to me.

1. I forgot that i needed to double dose the mixed 3a/3b solution
2. One of my dosers was pulling air and not actually dosing.

That can play with your mind and the results do not make sense. @William DeCoursey post is exactly what can happen. You are basically not dosing evenly and buffering something or precipitating something else.

 

[Joe Batt]

What about 2x checking the amount of your doser output?

Let it flow into a glass and measure how much is really doses, then/ afterwards dose it to your tank

Tried that, but thanks for your input.