Alkalinity too high WAY too fast

[hllb]

Hi all,

I just switched to All for Reef and am having issues getting dosing down. My tank is a 32g biocube (around 26 or 27g total water volume). when I tested alk this morning it was 7.1 (I aim for 8.5) so my dosing isn't at the right level. I increased the amount I'm dosing over the day, but wanted to bring it up closer to expected level using baking soda. I wanted to bring it up .5. However, the website I used clearly had it way wrong and I overdosed it. The alkalinity is now around 13. Good lord....I'm concerned about the rapid increase not the level as that will drop naturally in a couple of days. But man, I'm guessing there's nothing I can do now to counteract that giant spike in alkalinity?

 

[cblizza2079]

Hi all,

I just switched to All for Reef and am having issues getting dosing down. My tank is a 32g biocube (around 26 or 27g total water volume). when I tested alk this morning it was 7.1 (I aim for 8.5) so my dosing isn't at the right level. I increased the amount I'm dosing over the day, but wanted to bring it up closer to expected level using baking soda. I wanted to bring it up .5. However, the website I used clearly had it way wrong and I overdosed it. The alkalinity is now around 13. Good lord....I'm concerned about the rapid increase not the level as that will drop naturally in a couple of days. But man, I'm guessing there's nothing I can do now to counteract that giant spike in alkalinity?

check your calcium levels. My alk is sky high at 16dkh since I’m using tap water (RO unit still in mail) and I just raised my calcium levels to compensate. Corals are all doing fine.

 

[hllb]

check your calcium levels. My alk is sky high at 16dkh since I’m using tap water (RO unit still in mail) and I just raised my calcium levels to compensate. Corals are all doing fine.

13 is OK on it's own, but going from 7 to 13 may be really bad. The only SPS I have in the tank are encrusting montis though. Calcium is currently around 425.

 

[Garf]

What happened? Did the calculator say add a liquid solution and you added the same amount of powder directly?

 

[hllb]

What happened? Did the calculator say add a liquid solution and you added the same amount of powder directly?

Google sucks and said to add 1 TBL to raise it 1 dkh per 10 gallons. Why did I not double check that???? Sigh....I used 1 TBL

 

[hllb]

Well, so far everything looks fine. The big mystic sunset looks a bit unhappy with some faded spots, but that’s been ongoing with it. The thing is unkillable though so I’m confident it will be fine. My other monti looks perfect. I stopped dosing for now until the alk comes down.

 

[NowGlazeIT]

I think you should do a water change to dilute the alk a bit.

 

[moz71]

WAter change will help! When I did similar spike the impact on corals was not immediate so I would say how they look now is not the final impact. Even taking it down a little with partial water change will help! My monti did not show distress until after a few days even with getting back to stable. But all ranks are different!

 

[hllb]

Changed about 5 gallons. Might do that again later tonight.