Help with sudden alk rise !

[hans4811]

My alk has been pretty rock solid for some time now around 8.2-8.5 or so…like years. The past week I’ve seen this….

12/12 - 8.2
12/15 - 9.0
12/18 - 9.5
….so I turned off my Kalk dosing for now…

…so what have I changed…had a recent outbreak of cyano and treated it with sunnyx’s dyi snow and mb7, but used a lot more mb7 than I have in past. In about a 70g total system, I’ve used 7.5ml of snow and 1ml of mb7 for weekly maintenance. For this cyano, I went with 7.5ml snow and 6ml mb7. Dosed this starting on 12/12 for 4 days straight after vacuuming out cyano, basting sand/rocks , small water change in the vacuuming process, etc…skipped a day and final dose on 12/17. All cleared up, sand is all white again…yay me I thought.

Then I started seeing this rise of alk. Daily, I dose 3.6L of kalk (my max evap rate) and 120ml of BW alk8.3p, mixed in 50g/32 oz, in an SPS dominant tank…lots of white growth tips, so would think the opposite would be happening… Stopped carbon dosing np bacto when I got cyano and started treating with snow mix.

So has some chemical reaction with the bacteria and the kalk or alk or something else occurring causing my alk to spike ? Or has the cold weather we’ve been having changed the saturation point of my Kalk mix ? I keep it in a closet that’s not heated…down to 62 degs…house is 70.

Never had this happen b4…

So far none of my SPS have shown any signs of stress, but that could change…thinking of doing a water change possibly to lower it or maybe just let it naturally lower with me turning off the kalk for now….

Hoping @Randy Holmes-Farley can chime in…

Any ideas…thx

 

[hans4811]

…wanted to add that I don’t think any type of overdose occurred. I checked the Apex logs to my doser for both alk and kalk, and even measured the output of one of the cycles of both…all seemed fine there.

 

[hans4811]

Bump…

 

[Lavey29]

What has your calcium done in relation? What is your magnesium?

 

[hans4811]

All the other Param’s are okay..

Calcium - 435
Mag - 1360
N03 - 7.1
P04 - 0.12….nutrients went up a bit when I turned off carbon dosing with Np-Bacto…

Very strange…

 

[hans4811]

Turned off both Kalk and Alk dosing for today…I’ll recheck tomorrow around lunch which is my normal time for testing Param’s.

My dKH consumption for a day is usually around 0.5-1.0 dKH, so hopefully that’ll bring it back to my normal 8.5 or so.

In the year or so I’ve been running Kalk, this has never happened and trying to figure out why. Not even sure if Kalk is the problem, I just don’t know. Like I said, this has never happened before and this is a mature tank, over 3 yrs old and it’s been on cruise control for some time.

 

[Lavey29]

Well perhaps your corals are not growing as well currently thus reduced alk and cal consumption? I also found that dosing certain coral additives like AB plus and other aminos could cause a rise in my alk number.

 

[Lavey29]

And you double checked your alk test and salinity?

 

[hans4811]

Well perhaps your corals are not growing as well currently thus reduced alk and cal consumption? I also found that dosing certain coral additives like AB plus and other aminos could cause a rise in my alk number

See a lot of white tips growing on my acros, but who knows. And I‘m using the Reef Moonshiners method for dosing over a year now, and no issues before. Showing a few of the tips below…

My monthly ICP test is due in Jan, but I may go earlier to see if anything jumps out at me.

 

[hans4811]

And you double checked your alk test and salinity ?

I checked Alk first thing this morning …9.9dKh …wayyyy up…and again at lunch, went down to 9.4. …but that’s more probably from me turning off the Kalk dosing.

Just checked salinity…1.025 sg and temp is 78.8 F

 

[hans4811]

It‘s awful coincidental that this spike happened right when I started dosing the Snow/Mb7 and turned off carbon dosing the Np-Bacto. Anecdotal I know, but…

 

[Tathamet]

Very interesting. The exact same thing happened to me and I wasn’t even dosing anything (that I’m aware of) that would raise alk at the time. Over the course of maybe a week and a half my alk went from 7 to 13 and then all the sudden plummeted back down to 7. I lost almost everything in the tank during and after this event.

At first I thought maybe I accidentally used baking soda instead of calcium carbonate but I double checked and definitely used calcium carbonate.

Only thing I could think of was that my nitrate was being consumed at a high rate or something which supposedly causes it. But I had been in the 2-5 ppm range during the whole ordeal so was never fully sure what happened.

 

[hans4811]

Very interesting. The exact same thing happened to me and I wasn’t even dosing anything (that I’m aware of) that would raise alk at the time. Over the course of maybe a week and a half my alk went from 7 to 13 and then all the sudden plummeted back down to 7. I lost almost everything in the tank during and after this event.

At first I thought maybe I accidentally used baking soda instead of calcium carbonate but I double checked and definitely used calcium carbonate.

Only thing I could think of was that my nitrate was being consumed at a high rate or something which supposedly causes it. But I had been in the 2-5 ppm range during the whole ordeal so was never fully sure what happened.

That is weird, esp since your not even dosing anothing. And never had any issues using the calcium carbonate mix before from @SunnyX …use that on a weekly basis…love that stuff !

 

[Lavey29]

That is weird, esp since your not even dosing anothing. And never had any issues using the calcium carbonate mix before from @SunnyX …use that on a weekly basis…love that stuff !

I use the sunny mix to with no issues.

 

[Lavey29]

I checked Alk first thing this morning …9.9dKh …wayyyy up…and again at lunch, went down to 9.4. …but that’s more probably from me turning off the Kalk dosing.

Just checked salinity…1.025 sg and temp is 78.8 F

But have you had a second source validate your number like your LFS? reagents go bad, things get out of calibration to. It strange to have alk fluctuations but no cal at all fluctuate.

 

[hans4811]

But have you had a second source validate your number like your LFS? reagents go bad, things get out of calibration to. It strange to have alk fluctuations but no cal at all fluctuate.

True…been using my Hanna checker for Alk…wouldn’t hurt I guess to validate it.

 

[Lavey29]

True…been using my Hanna checker for Alk…wouldn’t hurt I guess to validate it.

Wouldn't hurt to get a second test. I had the same problem some months back if you check my thread posts. I think Randy provided me some good info about stuff we add to our tanks as routine dosing that can cause changes in alk levels. I know he mentioned sudden nitrates drop can affect alk.

 

[hans4811]

Wouldn't hurt to get a second test. I had the same problem some months back if you check my thread posts. I think Randy provided me some good info about stuff we add to our tanks as routine dosing that can cause changes in alk levels. I know he mentioned sudden nitrates drop can affect alk.

Thanks, I’ll check that as I do remember reading somewhere in here about my situation.

 

[Lavey29]

Thanks, I’ll check that as I do remember reading somewhere in here about my situation.

Alkalinity slowly rising

Does dosing amino acids several times a week cause a slow alkalinity increase? My alk has gone from 9 to 9.8 past several weeks and only change was weekly dosing of acrowpower now. Nitrates are stable at 12. Salinity consistent at 1.026. I do use coral pro salt which does have higher alk level...

www.reef2reef.com

This was my thread

 

[matt_work27]

I think I saw a video from ACI aquaculture that said that kalkwasser can free up carbonates bound to rock and other things. Maybe that is what happened here. In the same video he talked about how a friend of his dosing kalk using his method had his alk jump to like 13 or something crazy but his corals were doing fine. His hypothesis is as long as the changes in ph are slow, then you are good reguardless of changes in alk (at least increases in alk).