Alkalinity dropping

[Klyph]

I’ve posted before about my alkalinity dropping significantly , presumably due to precipitation. I need to make sure I’ve calibrated my expectations. My question to you all is, how much should I expect my alkalinity to drop each day? 0.1? 0.5? 2.0...?

My specs
- New Red Sea Reefer 625 (150 gallons), cycled in early September
- 7 fish
- 40 small frags
- 1 inch sand
- roughly 100 pounds dry rock.
- refugium with ai prime fuge light (running)
- Protein Skimmer with CO2 recycling scrubber (currently off, as I try to control alkalinity)
- Carbon Reactor (currently off)
- Temp 79
- Salinity 1.026
- PH 7.9
- Mg 1400
- nitrate 6 to 8
- Phosphates 0.0
- Calcium 420
- Alkalinity- Drops down to 4.0 (roughly .5 to 1.0 per day) once I raise it to over 8.0.

My question is, is it normal for a tank with my specs to drop over a half a point a day?

 

[dwest]

I’ve posted before about my alkalinity dropping significantly , presumably due to precipitation. I need to make sure I’ve calibrated my expectations. My question to you all is, how much should I expect my alkalinity to drop each day? 0.1? 0.5? 2.0...?

My specs
- New Red Sea Reefer 625 (150 gallons), cycled in early September
- 7 fish
- 40 small frags
- 1 inch sand
- roughly 100 pounds dry rock.
- refugium with ai prime fuge light (running)
- Protein Skimmer with CO2 recycling scrubber (currently off, as I try to control alkalinity)
- Carbon Reactor (currently off)
- Temp 79
- Salinity 1.026
- PH 7.9
- Mg 1400
- nitrate 6 to 8
- Phosphates 0.0
- Calcium 420
- Alkalinity- Drops down to 4.0 (roughly .5 to 1.0 per day) once I raise it to over 8.0.

My question is, is it normal for a tank with my specs to drop over a half a point a day?

If things are growing your tank could easily decrease by 0.5 dKH per day. But I would expect the decrease to slow or even stop at 4 dK. What test kit are you using? Do you plan to use kalkwasser or dose 2 part to control alkalinity?

 

[Klyph]

If things are growing your tank could easily decrease by 0.5 dKH per day. But I would expect the decrease to slow or even stop at 4 dK. What test kit are you using? Do you plan to use kalkwasser or dose 2 part to control alkalinity?

I started with kalkwasser, but have become gun-shy, as i had major precipitation problems. I’m using the Red Sea liquid alk now.

 

[ReeferWarrant]

I have a mixed reef and without dosing it drops about 1.0 dKH a week. The best I have seen is test your water a day after doing a water change, then test 3 days after. With the new numbers calculate what you need to raise it per day and dose that amount. BRS advises dosing multiple times a day to spread out the change in chemistry, still fine tuning my process but my ALK has stabilized substantially from doing this.

 

[Reefer1978]

My tank easily drops .5 a day without dosing.

 

[The Opinionated Reefer]

My tank would drop 2dkh a day without out dosing. Packed SPS tanks can consume 3 or Dkh a day