Concerned about Ca

mermaid_life

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I am very concerned. It's been over a month and I haven't had to dose Ca at all! Everyday my alk usage is 0.3dkh consistently and I dose daily with the Seachem reef buffer because I have low pH if I don't. pH fluctuates from 8.08 to 8.2 night to day like clockwork and has been this way for several months.

This all started with a power outage. Prior to the power outage, my tank was using 10-15ppm of Ca daily and everything had been looking the best it has ever been. Then I had a 6 hr power outage. Lost 1 acro frag. I was in the middle of fine tuning nitrate and phosphate because my sps were brownish and I read too high nitrate and phosphate could cause it so i was playing around. Well my phosphate dropped too fast and I got a minor outbreak of dinos that followed the outage. I treated the dinos with manual removal and vibrant, which took about 1 week. No more dinos now. Just minor cyano and light green algae dusting that my CUC is taking care of. I didn't change my water for 3 weeks because of dinos so I didn't have any Ca replenishment from water changes. Coraline is still actively growing on my glass daily but there is no drop in Ca for 3 weeks! How is this possible? I dose nothing else but alk/buffer.

Here are my params:
alk 8.0 per salifert
Ca 420-430 per salifert and red sea tests multiple times
Mag 1280
pH 8.08 to 8.2 per apex
Nitrate somewhere between 10 to <25 per salifert - hard to tell exactly. I did water changes weekly prior to outage to maintain closer to 10.
Phos: not zero, close to 0.1 - hard to tell with Salifert test
salinity: 1.025 consistently per refractometer, ~33.5 on apex probe consistent

I have no to minimal polyp extension on SPS as well which is also different pre and post power outage.
LPS look a bit ticked but not totally closed up.
No changes to temp or lighting.
I have a grounding probe
RODI
No salt changes
Fish and shrimp seem normal - hungry as always

Just trying to think of all the common questions and asks....... Any insight appreciated!
 
The expected calcium usage in your tank (with alk usage of 0.3 dKH per day) will be less than 2 ppm per day, so it will take a good while to detect it reliably. I wouldn't worry about it. Water changes alone might maintain it. :)
 
Thank you so much. That's great to know.

I wonder then how come before the power outage the testing seemed to show 10-15ppm of Ca usage daily? This was consistent for a few weeks after I added SPS frags. I was manually dosing at the time and every morning testing around 9am.
 
Thank you so much. That's great to know.

I wonder then how come before the power outage the testing seemed to show 10-15ppm of Ca usage daily? This was consistent for a few weeks after I added SPS frags. I was manually dosing at the time and every morning testing around 9am.

I don't know, but that is far more than can possibly be consumed if the alk consumption really was 0.3 dKH per day.
 

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