Bad test result or crazy high alk?

gcrance · Sep 26, 2015

running my test today and went to do my alk test with my hannah. ran out of my test bottle and opened up a new bottle exp 04/2016.

test maxed the meter out at 300ppm which would be 16.8dkh
ph hit on 8.3 just recalibrated my ph meter to make sure
temp 79
sal 1.026

is this just a failure on the hannah test? or could it actually be that high without the ph being through the roof. i have been dosing mag to get that back up but havent run my mag test yet.

kinda freaking out

Randy Holmes-Farley · Sep 26, 2015

Hard to know without trying some things, but I lean to testing error. It could be that high without pH being higher, however.

Have you been dosing alkalinity?

Magnesium dosing shouldn't impact alkalinity, unless you used the wrong bottle.

Do you have some new salt water you can test with the Hannah?

gcrance · Sep 26, 2015

yea have been dosing alk. using b-ionic. got the 1 gallon jugs on dosing pump. been about 1.5 months on this jug almost empty. dosing 51ml per day cause alk kept dropping into the 6's 48-51 stabilized around 9.5-9.6dkh, but i have been dosing mag too since that was low. i thought the mg coming back into range would make the ca and alk bind better in the water? new sw is coming online in a few hours to be able to test. need to run to lfs anyways gonna have them test against it to be sure im not having a derp moment.

Randy Holmes-Farley · Sep 26, 2015

OK, sounds good.

It is possible you have been overdosing the B-ionic, which would show up as high alkalinity.

Magnesium helps prevent precipitation of calcium carbonate, but by itself wouldn't impact alkalinity.

However, if you determined a maintenance dose of B-ionic at very low magneisum levels and then raised magnesium without changing the daily B-ionic dose, that might cause an apparent rise in alk (and a small rise in calcium) since the real demand in the tank for calcium and alkalinity due to abiotic precipitation of calcium carbonate may have declined.

gcrance · Sep 26, 2015

ok so i tested my fresh SW and got 177ppm or 9.9dkh so that is Bueno. my main tank still test at max on the meter of 300. so i dunno how its happened but the alk just went through the roof. i guess like u said randy since i did not adjust my alk dose to take into account for upping the Mg. so were inline for a 35g water change and see what we get.

Randy Holmes-Farley · Sep 26, 2015

OK, definitely stop dosing for a while.

gcrance · Sep 26, 2015

Stop all together or just bump it way down like 75% less?

Randy Holmes-Farley · Sep 26, 2015

Stop. We aren't even sure how high it is, but too high by far (if the result is real).

I'd wait until it dropped below 200 ppm before even considering restarting.

Do you have an alk target that you prefer?

gcrance · Sep 26, 2015

ive bee shooting for 9.2 since it seemed like an easy number to hold. below 9 was up and down daily and over 9.5 seemed to high for softies, but tank always looked ok.

Randy Holmes-Farley · Sep 26, 2015

All right.

I'd wait until you get to 11 dKH and slowly restart to try to stabilize at 9 dKH .

gcrance · Sep 26, 2015

alrighty we've made some progress. decided this would be a great opportunity to clean my sump out since i wanted to do a water change anyways. so in the process of that one of my drain lines came apart at an elbow and spewed water all over my gfci socket which Im great full i installed now. so after like 5 trips to home depot much cursing and screaming and some bristle worm stings were back up and running and cleaned out. 35g water change has brought the alk back down to 14.4dkh so at least were in measurable limits now.

Randy Holmes-Farley · Sep 27, 2015

Sorry to hear that, but at least there's a silver lining.

gcrance · Oct 4, 2015

Update. Lil over a week after the alk spike and were working our way down. Down to 13.2dkh and another water change on the way. Although i will say at a very high dkh aside from the cyano bloom the tank has never looked better

Randy Holmes-Farley · Oct 4, 2015

gcrance said:
Update. Lil over a week after the alk spike and were working our way down. Down to 13.2dkh and another water change on the way. Although i will say at a very high dkh aside from the cyano bloom the tank has never looked better

Water changes aren't likely to bring it down much more, unless it is a lower alk salt mix.

gcrance · Oct 5, 2015

I figured i might get lucky. First one brought it back to measurable limits and my fresh salt mix tested out at 9.6dkh so was hoping maybe with the dilution i could bring it down another point or so. Bonus though Mg is almost back into tolerance. Just under 1300 now

gcrance · Oct 5, 2015

Btw. Passed by your neck of the woods last night omw to NH on 93. Someone forgot to turn the heat on up here.

Randy Holmes-Farley · Oct 5, 2015

Yes, it has been pretty cool the past week. Had to turn on the heat.

tcoyle · Oct 5, 2015

Have you verified you don't have a bad reagent. If you check out my thread, we have been discussing a bad batch of hanna reagents. The bottles start out ok, then as you use them they start showing really low readings, which could lead one to over dose alk to get things back in check.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/hanna-alk-reagent-issues.210716/

gcrance · Oct 11, 2015

@Randy Holmes-Farley well things are coming back into check however i swear i cant win for losing. maybe im just chasing numbers to much. my Ca is running low now which maybe is due to a growth spurt getting ready to go down or something i dunno. so don't wanna abuse the help you provided here, but ive never had to dose Ca since i have been reefing. always sat around 400-430 ish double tested to make sure got 283 and 285 on both test. and again looking at the reef calc here http://reef.diesyst.com/chemcalc/chemcalc.html using the bionic ca buffer im gonna need another 1113ml to get ca back up into the 420 range. so since i didnt adjust my alk last time when i started fixing my mag i don't wanna just set the dosser up to run off a half gallon without checking. i still have about 500ml of mg left in my jug which should get me back up around 1350 but with the mg climbing should i throttle back my intended dosage of 65ml of ca buffer per day or what. i really dunno whats safe to add all in one chunk

got my numbers to this now

Alk 11.42dKh
PO4 .0827
CA 283
Mg 1290
Sal 1.026
Tmp 78
NH3 0
NO3 .5
NO2 0.0

Randy Holmes-Farley · Oct 11, 2015

Before you dose that much calcium, let's make sure it really is that low.

When was the last time you measured calcium and what was it? What have you dosed since then for calcium or alkalinity?

Try the test on some new salt water to try to see if it is working right.