I had a calcium spike recently so i stopped dosing calcium completely and noticed it was still going up. I finally figuree out it’s most likely the balling method part C thats raising it. It says liquid calcium on the box. Today will be day 1 cutting that as well. Calcium is at 540 as of last night... BRS recommends that you dose 2x the balling part C as the amount of two part added. This will keep raising my calcium. I’m wondering if anyone else has calcium issues dosing tropic marin balling method part C.
BRS balling method.
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Randy Holmes-Farley
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FWIW, Balling Part C does not raise calcium to any significant extent. If you maintian salinity, it will not raise calcium at all. It is like adding salt mix.
Randy Holmes-Farley
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Are you using tap water? It can contain calcium.
saltgogi
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The things I dose are:
- Red sea trace A,B,C,D.
- Phosphate from loudwolf.
- nitrate from brightwell aquatics
- acropower
- amino acids from korallen zucht
- brightwell aquatics replenish
- Brightwell aqutics vitamin c
- Algaebarn phytoplankton
I doubt any of these have calcium in it.. Maybe the phyto because it's in saltwater which could contain calcium but I doubt it could make this much of a difference.
- Red sea trace A,B,C,D.
- Phosphate from loudwolf.
- nitrate from brightwell aquatics
- acropower
- amino acids from korallen zucht
- brightwell aquatics replenish
- Brightwell aqutics vitamin c
- Algaebarn phytoplankton
I doubt any of these have calcium in it.. Maybe the phyto because it's in saltwater which could contain calcium but I doubt it could make this much of a difference.
Randy Holmes-Farley
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There are also different DIY recipes. If you used a different recipe for the alk and calcium parts, you could end up in mismatched dosing needs.
Randy Holmes-Farley
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Dosing nitrate will tend to boost alkalinity.
Randy Holmes-Farley
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Yes, but they use my DIY recipes and use at least 2 of them that differ in potency by a factor of 2.
Randy Holmes-Farley
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OK, but be certain you are using distilled water for the Hanna blank. You will get false low readings for calcium with the Hanna if there are even tiny traces of calcium in the blank.
Randy Holmes-Farley
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Try distilled instead.
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User1
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This is interesting. I did not know it. Thanks.
My alk is usually around 8 - 8.2 but I noticed it last week jump up to 8.8 and 8.9 so I turned off my dosing pump to let it slowly come down. I don't think it is much but I couldn't figure out why it increased. I have recently dosed nitrate but not much. 50 ml a day as I try to increase my nitrates from 0 to at least 10 - 12 ppm range.
Probably not enough to raise the alk but something I'll pay attention to moving forward.
