Help!!!

Shawna Solomon · Sep 17, 2019

So I was staring at the tank this morning and was thinking wow its cloudy. I checked and my skimmer was overflowing so there were bubbles in my return chamber. I cleaned the skimmer and thought it would clear up. It was drastically worsening. So my husband suggest is the tank overdosing something maybe and it was! My dosing pump dumped 1000 ML of alkalinity into my tank!!! I immediately started draining water from the tank. I only had 35 gallons of RODI water on hand so I hurried and did a 35-gallon water change. The picture is what it still looks like after the water change. I checked the KH as I was taking water out and my Hanna checker only reads up to 300 ppm and that is what it said. So, I checked it again after the WC and it still is at 281 which is still about 15.736 DKH. I am running more RODI water now but I am out of salt. My only option is to buy reef crystals from the local PetSmart which has a DKH of 13 so I don't think that would help. What are my chances here? Should I expect to lose a lot? The other picture is what it looked like before this accident. I obviously unplugged the dosing pump but it already dumped all of the KH into it and unlucky for me I just replaced it two days ago so it was full as it could be. My tank is pretty stocked. I had at least 30 corals in there does anyone think it will survive? Or has anyone else had this happen before? I still can't see anything in there

Thanks in advance.

Kayvon · Sep 17, 2019

Try instant Ocean if they have it. Should be much less than Reef Crystals.

Billdogg · Sep 17, 2019

Been there, done that! In my case, it was 2 gallons on BRS Alk into my 120. ticked off everything in the tank, but nothing died because of it. What I had done was adjust the timer and accidentally switched it from "auto" to "on".

Although this goes without saying, turn off your dosing pump! I let it come down on it's own over a few weeks. You can expect the sand to clump up badly, and plan on cleaning any and all pumps/heaters at least weekly. The excess Alk will precipitate out and seems to have an affinity for electrical stuff. It even coated the sides of my sump so badly that I had to drain it down and use a scraper to remove it. You can try something with lower Alk (regular IO?), but mainly, DON'T PANIC!!!

Remember that NOTHING GOOD HAPPENS FAST. If you try to do something to quickly get it back in range you are just as likely to cause other problems.

If it were in your mixing barrel, then you could "carefully" use some muriatic acid to force it out of solution, but I, for one, would not suggest that in a running system due to the probably wild swings your pH would have.

HTH!

Shawna Solomon · Sep 17, 2019

Billdogg said:
Been there, done that! In my case, it was 2 gallons on BRS Alk into my 120. ****** off everything in the tank, but nothing died because of it. What I had done was adjust the timer and accidentally switched it from "auto" to "on".

Although this goes without saying, turn off your dosing pump! I let it come down on it's own over a few weeks. You can expect the sand to clump up badly, and plan on cleaning any and all pumps/heaters at least weekly. The excess Alk will precipitate out and seems to have an affinity for electrical stuff. It even coated the sides of my sump so badly that I had to drain it down and use a scraper to remove it. You can try something with lower Alk (regular IO?), but mainly, DON'T PANIC!!!

Remember that NOTHING GOOD HAPPENS FAST. If you try to do something to quickly get it back in range you are just as likely to cause other problems.

HTH!

Okay, with that being said I will not do any more water changes today. I don't want to shock anything any worse than it already is. Also, thanks for the advice on the cleaning of the pumps. Should I do slow five-gallon water changes a day or should I do 20 a week which is my usual schedule? and I unplugged my dosing pump as soon as I noticed. It is odd though because I haven't touched my pump since I programmed it a few months ago. I am assuming this means I need to buy another or just dose by hand because then I know I can't overdose. lol. Thank you for your advice.