Correlation vscausation alkalinity spike

[pgroth1]

What are your thoughts? Does an all alkalinity spike really cause rtn,stn or is there an alkalinity spike because the corals are suffering already from some other cause and thus not consuming alkalinity?

 

[KrisReef]

My spikes were caused by my dosing efforts and errors. The death of coral reduced uptake accordingly but that followed my lead, not the other way around.

Why Alk sometimes triggers these seems to be that the tank was already running critical (in some way) and the swing tipped the balance towards sickness, RTN or STN.

The butterfly effect.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

What are your thoughts? Does an all alkalinity spike really cause rtn,stn or is there an alkalinity spike because the corals are suffering already from some other cause and thus not consuming alkalinity?

I would expect both happen in different scenarios.