How stable is stable in your own terms

[Stickboy15]

so I was just talking to a fellow reefer and he considers his reef stable with Alk swings of .8. Now In my book I say stable is anything under .4 of a swing during the day. How stable do you feel stable. Especially for sps

 

[Hitman]

I agree with your thoughts of .4 or under preferably under.

 

[DSC reef]

With a high alk demand and daily/nightly dosing I would consider .5 to .8 acceptable. Of course this is manual dosing. A doser can eliminate that much of a swing but manual dosing always worked fine.

 

[AdamNC]

Alk .5+/- is acceptable in my book.

 

[Bpb]

I test alk every 2-3 days. I aim for it to be the same every test.

 

[cracker]

I try for a .5 swing In "my" experience is not easy !

 

[Stickboy15]

I dose 10 ml of each to my sps/lps biocube and shoot for all at 9.8 and normaly I'm within .5 of it depending on the time and I dose using my apex dose. but I added a ton of coral including a ton of high end acros and I was expecting a drop in alk but my tests have been ruining higher since anywhere from 10.3-10.8?

 

[Stickboy15]

bump

 

[DSC reef]

You wouldn't notice a drop in alk until the new corals start growing. Until then I'd stick with the number your shooting for and dose accordingly. Since your alk is high then I'd suggest testing before dosing.

 

[Stickboy15]

thanks

 

[Paul B]

I think my tank is very stable because I may test once a year and all is well. So far any way

 

[Stickboy15]

I test every other day

 

[Ramon Estevez]

Ever since I’ve started adding more coral I test every other day it stabilized at 9.1 then I waited 3 or 4 days and it was 10.1. Of course with Kalk it seems harder to keep stable.

 

[Ramon Estevez]

I’ve been testing every other day as I’ve added mainly LPS corals. I was attempting to run Kalk in the ATO but this seems to be really unstable. It seemed to stabilize at 9.1 but then I waited 3 or 4 days and it was 10.1 so I’ve diluted the solution each spike to find that sweet spot.

 

[MARK M. DAVIS]

If you measure alk at the exact same time each day, you could expect pretty close alk consistency. But, alk fluctuates during the day. In the morning, when lights are just coming on, alk is higher. As the day progresses, with lights on, sps is growing and alk drops. And, the cycle continues. When you dose, there’s concentrated area of alk so values are dependent on sample. I use a calcium reactor. You see the similar cyclical cycle with alk as you see with tank ph. The alk and ph curves are inverted from each other. That being said, my max to min alk changes during the day don’t exceed 0.2-0.4.

 

[MARK M. DAVIS]

There’s a fair amount of things to consider.