Alkalinity

[hubble]

My mixed reef has been up and running for about a year now. Finally got around to hooking up my doser (4 head) last month and all is well. I use B-ionic for two part and Seachem Plus and Trace. I was thinking about swapping over to Red Sea mixed reef recipe. Their recommened alkalinity level is 11.5 which seems very high to me, I'm at 8.4 now. Does that level sound right 11.5?

 

[Roggio]

What types of coral are you growing? The ALK directly correlates with the nutrients and the photo period in the tank. It's worth reading about but basically low ALK, low nutrients, lower photoperiod and vs versa. I recently found this out the hard way and burned a lot of my SPS. I had my ALK at 8.3, my nutrients undetectable, and my photo period was around 9 hours of peak. IMO if things look good and your coral is growing I wouldn't make changes.

 

[BoomCorals]

IMO lower alk is better and more forgiving. I run a 10 hour photo period, alk of 7-8 and nitrate 1-2ppm and po4 around .03-.08

 

[jda]

Alk levels will not really matter (within reason) unless you are doing BOTH of keeping Acropora AND are artificially stripping water of nitrate and phosphate by carbon dosing or GFO.

I do keep my acropora display under 8 with the N at about .1 and the P between .005 and .01 - the tank keeps these this low on it's own. My frag tank, which is bare bottom and unable to really keep the N and P that low on it's own, has N of about 2 and P of about .2 and I keep the alk at 10.5 since it is smaller and gives me more room for error.

All of that being said, a alk of 8.4 is totally fine if you want to keep it there.

 

[mtraylor]

My Alk runs low as well. No issues. I would stay around 8.4 if you can.

 

[hubble]

After reading up some on the Red Sea mixed reef recipe I think I'm gonna stay with what I have for now. I don't wanna go back to manual dosing. Thanks for the replies