gcrance
Active Member
::CAUTION INBOUND TEXT WALL:: but all relevant to my question at the end
So im trying to figure out my daily alk uptake on my new tank i know its going to shift up and down a little as bioload increases and coraline gets going but this is really just to get a historlogical overview of how its running.
so tank specs
300g display
125 gallon sump
tank has 320lbs of rock. (was dry and currently cooking in the tank)
and 300lbs of sand. mix between coarse coral gravel and carib sea fiji pink fine sand
between substrate rock and equipment im figuring displacement loss around around -125g
so i have been estimating it to be closer to 350g actual system
so here is the hang up. i use the reef chemistry calculator found here:
http://reef.diesyst.com/chemcalc/chemcalc.html
i punch in 350g water volume my current alk desired alk and product type which im using the nionic bicarb system p1 and i get my result.
No biggie seems about normal i used this method on my 100g that i just broke down. and ive done this tank completely new. new tank, new equip (mostly) new rock, new sand, so everything is newish and im trying to get away from some of the bad habits i had with my other tank that caused some borderline irreparable problems with my old system. and thus far its been up for a month and i haven't had any issues except for a couple leaks here and there and a kind of surprising uptake in alk, but not crazy. i have moved a couple of hardier corals into the tank and my fish and everyone is doing just fine no complaints
Also this system has been on a prodibio dosing regiment from the start and i love it
So here is the hang up im having i have tested my alk everyday and i got down to 5.264dkh at one point because we were really testing anything except ammonia for the first month due to the new tank cycle and the prodibio being added just to make sure it was doing its job. (and it has wonderfully) and the few tester corals i put in have been doing great even a hydronphora frag is showing new growth on all its limbs. so once we noticed the low alk we decided it time to start bringing that back in line and picked up the daily testing and adjusting to get it all in check
so heres some of the more recent test results
6/6/16
tmp 76.7
ph 8.16
Sg 35ppt
Ca 410ppm
Mg 1350ppm
Alk 5.264dkh
now the following were just gonna focus on alk and ph because everything else stayed very stable within a couple tenths through today
6/7/16
ph 8.14
Alk 5.712 (added 150ml bionic part 1 7pm) about a .5dkh increse
6/8/16
ph 8.09
Alk 6.272 (added 150ml bionic part 1 7pm) about a .5dkh increse
6/9/16
ph 8.09
Alk 6.664 (added 150ml bionic part 1 7pm) about a .5dkh increse
notice a pattern? about a .5dkh increse daily from adding 150ml same time each day so one could say my daily uptake would be around .25dkh and 50ml daily the remaining 100ml added is what giving me my .5dkh increase daily until my target of 8.2-8.5ish dkh is reached
the math works in my head but maybe one of our resident science will show me where im wrong if im wrong
so here is a compounding discrepancy. we did not test on 6/10/16 and i just ran my test for today
6/11/16 and again we have stable params as described in the test from 6/6 no significant change
except alk which tested at 6.888dkh. now i expected it to be about a .25dkh increase since i skipped a day of adding bionic and a day of testing which was close enough
Again no biggie.
So i went back to the reef calc in the link above and tried to back engineer my total system volume based on my alk numbers and something doesn't add up
if i plug in 350g and my current alk as the 6/6 test of 5.264 and my desired alk of the 6/7 test of 5.712 i should come back with around 151ml of solution added to 350g assuming that estimate on total system volume is correct, but it doesnt i comes back with 264ml needed to be added almost a 115ml difference the only way i can get my dosed alk of 150ml daily to correspond with my tested numbers being input is to reduce the tank size down to 200g which i don't believe i have displaced 200 ish gallons of water with my rock sand and equipment partially because my test from 6/9 of 6.664 and 6/11 of 6.88 on 350g plugged in comes back at 151.3 as expected.
so i guess what im trying to verify here is it possible that im that wrong on my system volume and if so why does the math work for the 6/9 and 6/11 reads giving that ive skipped a day or is the reef chem calculator wrong or am i doing the reverse math really wrong.
So im trying to figure out my daily alk uptake on my new tank i know its going to shift up and down a little as bioload increases and coraline gets going but this is really just to get a historlogical overview of how its running.
so tank specs
300g display
125 gallon sump
tank has 320lbs of rock. (was dry and currently cooking in the tank)
and 300lbs of sand. mix between coarse coral gravel and carib sea fiji pink fine sand
between substrate rock and equipment im figuring displacement loss around around -125g
so i have been estimating it to be closer to 350g actual system
so here is the hang up. i use the reef chemistry calculator found here:
http://reef.diesyst.com/chemcalc/chemcalc.html
i punch in 350g water volume my current alk desired alk and product type which im using the nionic bicarb system p1 and i get my result.
No biggie seems about normal i used this method on my 100g that i just broke down. and ive done this tank completely new. new tank, new equip (mostly) new rock, new sand, so everything is newish and im trying to get away from some of the bad habits i had with my other tank that caused some borderline irreparable problems with my old system. and thus far its been up for a month and i haven't had any issues except for a couple leaks here and there and a kind of surprising uptake in alk, but not crazy. i have moved a couple of hardier corals into the tank and my fish and everyone is doing just fine no complaints
Also this system has been on a prodibio dosing regiment from the start and i love it
So here is the hang up im having i have tested my alk everyday and i got down to 5.264dkh at one point because we were really testing anything except ammonia for the first month due to the new tank cycle and the prodibio being added just to make sure it was doing its job. (and it has wonderfully) and the few tester corals i put in have been doing great even a hydronphora frag is showing new growth on all its limbs. so once we noticed the low alk we decided it time to start bringing that back in line and picked up the daily testing and adjusting to get it all in check
so heres some of the more recent test results
6/6/16
tmp 76.7
ph 8.16
Sg 35ppt
Ca 410ppm
Mg 1350ppm
Alk 5.264dkh
now the following were just gonna focus on alk and ph because everything else stayed very stable within a couple tenths through today
6/7/16
ph 8.14
Alk 5.712 (added 150ml bionic part 1 7pm) about a .5dkh increse
6/8/16
ph 8.09
Alk 6.272 (added 150ml bionic part 1 7pm) about a .5dkh increse
6/9/16
ph 8.09
Alk 6.664 (added 150ml bionic part 1 7pm) about a .5dkh increse
notice a pattern? about a .5dkh increse daily from adding 150ml same time each day so one could say my daily uptake would be around .25dkh and 50ml daily the remaining 100ml added is what giving me my .5dkh increase daily until my target of 8.2-8.5ish dkh is reached
the math works in my head but maybe one of our resident science will show me where im wrong if im wrong
so here is a compounding discrepancy. we did not test on 6/10/16 and i just ran my test for today
6/11/16 and again we have stable params as described in the test from 6/6 no significant change
except alk which tested at 6.888dkh. now i expected it to be about a .25dkh increase since i skipped a day of adding bionic and a day of testing which was close enough
Again no biggie.
So i went back to the reef calc in the link above and tried to back engineer my total system volume based on my alk numbers and something doesn't add up
if i plug in 350g and my current alk as the 6/6 test of 5.264 and my desired alk of the 6/7 test of 5.712 i should come back with around 151ml of solution added to 350g assuming that estimate on total system volume is correct, but it doesnt i comes back with 264ml needed to be added almost a 115ml difference the only way i can get my dosed alk of 150ml daily to correspond with my tested numbers being input is to reduce the tank size down to 200g which i don't believe i have displaced 200 ish gallons of water with my rock sand and equipment partially because my test from 6/9 of 6.664 and 6/11 of 6.88 on 350g plugged in comes back at 151.3 as expected.
so i guess what im trying to verify here is it possible that im that wrong on my system volume and if so why does the math work for the 6/9 and 6/11 reads giving that ive skipped a day or is the reef chem calculator wrong or am i doing the reverse math really wrong.
