Help Dialing In 2 -part dosing

[Bill_Moorman]

Hello all-

Need some assistance with dialing in my 2 part auto dosing.

I’ve got my Apex and BRS dosers hooked up.

My normal alk drop per day is .30- from 9 to 8.7. I manually dose 8.5ml and it hits 9 spot on.

As such, I added 8.5ml this morning to raise up alk to 9.0, tested, and confirmed. Next I programmed my apex to dose 8.5ml throughout the day (24 hour dosing).

I just checked and my current alk is 8.8.

Admittedly, I thought I’d test tonight and see 9 on the hanna, so I was disappointed to see 8.8dkh.

I did add a mini reactor with 5tsp of HC GFO, and 4tsp of carbon (the best one from BRS).

Would the gfo have an effect on alk? My water is so clear and phosphates dropped from .53 to .13 over night. I’ve got some hair algae (tank has been up since January , 40b with sump) so I am hoping that will clear up.

My thoughts: since I am doing 24hr dosing and alk isn’t used at night, will the night time dosing return my alk to 9.0? Or since it’s not been 24 hours should I just wait till tomorrow and test at the same time?

I’m just trying to attain stability here.

Thanks in advance and sorry for the long post.

 

[Potatohead]

Possibly the doser calibration is slightly off. I would just increase dose 10% and check tomorrow. Always check at same time. Also don’t worry about .1 here and there, the checker is not accurate enough and you will always be chasing your tail.

I don’t know if it has been confirmed either way if alk is consumed overnight or not. I dose over 24 hours.

 

[Bill_Moorman]

Should I manually dose to 9dkh right now and up the auto dosage 10%?

 

[Potatohead]

If it were me I would get it stable and then up it to where you want it manually dosed at the end. You could do that in the middle I suppose but it may make dialing it in take a bit longer. You’re never going to get it to read 9.0 every day, but if you can check it for weeks on end and it’s between say 8.7 and 9.1 each time, that’s pretty good.

 

[Ron Reefman]

IMHO some reefers go a wee bit over the top on maintaining stability of Ca and alk. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it isn't important, but it isn't necessary to keep them in such narrow ranges either. I have a 50g DT with a 30g sump/refugium. It's stocked full of zoas, rock flower anemones, RBTA, along with lots of sps frags and small colonies. My Ca and alk drop every week. The Ca from 425 to between 375 or 400 and the alk from 9.0dKH to 8.0 or 8.5dKH. I manually dose it back up to my desired 425 and 9.0 every Monday after I test. I've seen absolutely no signs of anybody struggling in the tank, not corals, not fish not other inverts (and I have a wide variety of them). Just food for thought.

 

[pecan2phat]

I'm recently new to dosing, been a CaRx user for a long time before I took a short break from the hobby.
I've been dosing only for about 30 days now and after starting with a standard 1 mil for every 4 gal water volume, then adjusting for variances. (I manually always bring the values to target first)
What's been working for me is dosing Alkalinity at night over a 10 hour period starting 1 hour after lights out and Calcium reversed.

 

[Bill_Moorman]

Thanks for the replies everyone!

Just tested this morning and I’m sitting at 8.8. I think I’ll leave everything be for now and retest tomorrow morning. As long as I can keep it between 8.7-9.1 I’ll be happy.

 

[Bill_Moorman]

Morning all!

Here is what’s going on:

My tank generally uses .3 alk per day, dropping from a dosed 9.0 to 8.7. I’ve added 8.5ml manually to bring it to 9.0, and then used the Reeftronics dosing program to spread that over 24 doses per day.

I was on vacation last Friday to Monday, and when I checked my alk reading this morning (I usually test between 6-7am), my reading was 8.3.

I thought spreading the dose will keep the levels consistent. Is that the correct assumption?

I just dosed manually back to 9.0 and turned off my doser to allow me to see what the tank is using for a 24 hour period and readjust.

This is confusing.

 

[Bill_Moorman]

Checked this morning. 8.7

Bump.

Any idea why I am having these inconsistencies?

 

[jgvergo]

Are you doing water changes? If so, what is the Alk of your new water?

 

[LbulletM]

Does your tank use more alk at higher concentrations? ie if there is more available, the tank will consume more? Have you ever gone a day without dosing to see what the second day would result in?

If that's the case, then spreading out the dosage could possibly result in a higher constant alk and, therefore, higher constant consumption, requiring just a slightly higher addition rate.

Either way, just keep tweaking up your addition rate in small increments until it's stable.