Help! New tank guzzling nutrients

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

How much alk did you add (or expect to add) via the kalkwasser and the ESV?

 

[araziza]

.5 dkh. The package said that adding 1mL per gallon raises it 2.08dKh, which I assume means that .5 would be roughly 12.5mL obviously I need to pare it down to accommodate rock work and sand

 

[DE FISH]

What a headache never invested in a trident but I’d go with stability and stick with one means of testing different tests will unfortunately = different results. My 2 pence I’ll let Randy divulge in the technicalities

 

[araziza]

Heh, stability is the whole goal of this endeavour. I just figured my best shot at stability is to actually understand what’s going on.

 

[araziza]

Ok, still confused, but I finally have things stabilized. I’ve managed to get calcium and alkalinity relatively stable for the past 2 ish weeks. However I have achieved this by dosing 46 mL of ESV B-Ionic per day. That’s nearly 2 dKh per day. How is that even possible? Still no coralline…

This is looking really expensive. I think the reason the BRS Kalk wasn’t working might just be that my full evaporation would only raise my alk by .8 or less (according to the diesys reef calculator), meaning I’d still be dropping 1.2 dKh per day. My tank has already nearly chugged the ful 32oz set of bionic, so maybe I go back to Kalk for my evap and add 36mL all for reef for the remaining 1.2 dKh…

 

[araziza]

Or just buy the 1gal esv set. See how far that gets me.