Spare time
10K Club member
12 is only dangrous if you blindly dose but anything is dangerous when you don't pay attention to what you are doing. Also yes natural sea water is lower but natural does not equal better. Nature doesn't provide the ideal situation for any organism, and corals are limited by their intake of specific elements for growth. No organism lives in an ideal environment in the wild and many of us are not trying to replicate wild reefs but rather make something ideal for us and faster growing coral is often one thing people want. However, if you remove that limitation within the range that does not significantly and negatively alter other elements then it is fine. Yes alkalinity being too higher will cause precipitation and a high pH but again anything is bad when not in range. What you want to have as your alkalinity all depends on if you are keeping acros or not as their skeleton will build faster than their tissue resulting in burnt tips. SPS dominant tanks tend to do better in Alk less than 10 but this is not true for all sps as that is a made up category that doesn't hold any scientific weight. Some non-acro SPS will get burnt tips in high alk water but I believe this has to do more with a combination of higher alk and low nitrogen phosphorus levels.
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