Huge Increase in Dosing Amounts...Red Sea Reefer 170

Darren Caballero · Aug 5, 2018

Hi there, I’ve been a long time lurker on this forum but this is one of my first posts.

I use kalkwasser primarily to dose my tank with cal and alk. Generally about half of fully saturated in potency. I have always had a bit of an issue with needing more alk than cal, but I would just manually adjust once and a while to fix and had no real issues.

Probably in the last month to 6 weeks, I have noticed a seemingly massive increase in demand. At this point I am doing full potency kalk solution and also dosing roughly 50ml of alk per day (Sometimes more). Calcium isn’t going down quite as fast but still needs probably 50ml once or twice a week. I use the BRS Pharma line for kalk, alk and cal.

The only meaningful things that have happened to my tank in the last month or two are that I recently got and installed an Apex (which is keeping me more in tune with the tank, but shouldn’t affect chemistry), and also I lowered my Radion XR30 Pro from around 65% to now 50% because the top half of my tank seemed like it was getting too much light. The light changes happened about 2 weeks ago.

To my eyes, I just don’t think I have the kind of coral load that requires this much dosing, and I definitely cannot figure why the change would come in so quickly. What you see in my tank has more or less been there for the past 4 months or more.

Any ideas for what could be happening? Do I really just need to start dosing now?

Diesel · Aug 5, 2018

How fast are you big three # dropping?
Do you have any test results from the big three?

Btw, welcome on R2R my friend.

BestMomEver · Aug 5, 2018

Welcome! I keep a written record when I test and keep it in an app called Aquarimate. It shows trends which might help you. In the meantime, like Diesel said..... what are your levels?

rkpetersen · Aug 5, 2018

Welcome to R2R.

What was your measured alk level before and what is it now?

That definitely seems like far too much alk consumption for the biological incorporation expected from your tank livestock.

Generally, when alk consumption seems too high for the bioload, the 'experts' will always invoke abiotic precipitation of calcium carbonate. Because our aquaria are close to saturation for this compound, many things can push it over the edge and cause more calcium carbonate to precipitate out. Solubility decreases with temperature, so heaters and pumps which get warm are a common place for this to occur. It can also occur on rocks, in the sandbed, and in your sump. And the higher you try to keep your alk and calcium levels, the more likely abiotic precipitation will occur. Also of course make sure that your calcium and alk aren't being dispensed near each other at the same time; this will cause it to immediately precipitate out. Also, keep your magnesium level on the high side; magnesium interferes with calcium carbonate precipitation and allow more of it to stay in solution.

No doubt that is at least a part of the problem. But I am also sure that there are other unclear factors contributing to alk drop that even the experts can't explain.

KrisReef · Aug 5, 2018

You may have been over lighting your corals, causing growth suppression? When you lowered the light, the corals responded by growing faster and consuming more CA & Alk? If this were true, I would expect that the corals now appear more expanded during the day, (more polyp extension?)

Also, perhaps more coralline algae growth recently is where the nutrients are going?

I'm always amazed at how much CA & Alk are consumed when my tank is running well and the corals are happy.

Darren Caballero · Aug 5, 2018

I don’t drip at all right now, that’s the thing. I am just manually pour dosing right now because up until now, kalk has been totally fine for my tank’s needs. Usually pouring in 25-50ml at a time slowly in high flow area during the day depending on my schedule.

This shows my recent alk testing. So specifically just looking at the last few days, the recording at around 10 dkh was immediately after a large water change using Red Sea Pro salt, which has a naturally pretty high dkh. From then until the next reading, I only dosed the fully saturated kalk using my Tunze ATO and it dropped all the way till the 7s. Then for the next couple days I was manually pouring in my alk additive around 50-60ml per day and as you can see it basically kept it at the same value.

Here is the Cal test. Also I tested Mg for the first time in a month earlier today and it came out to around 1400ppm. I am using the Red Sea Pro test kits.

Before all of this, I used Aquarimate for my tests and my alk levels would stay pretty consistent around 8.5 dkhwhere I wanted them from just the half saturated kalk alone. Now I can’t keep anything stable because of the erratic and super fast consumption (or maybe precipitation?).

Let me know if you need anything else!

Darren Caballero · Aug 5, 2018

One other thing I wanted to point out is my PH meter. If you look at the swings in PH they very closely match when my Tunze ATO kicks on. The ATO dump point and the PH probe are in the same sump chamber, so I’m sure the whole tank doesn’t actually swing this way, but I just want to say I’m pretty certain that the limewater I am dosing to the tank at least does seem to have the potency that it is supposed to.

BestMomEver · Aug 5, 2018

This stuff is sooooo cool to learn about! Thanks #rkpeterson for explaining all that stuff!

So grateful for experts!

Good luck Darren!

rkpetersen · Aug 5, 2018

I found manual dosing to cause a huge amount of abiotic precipitation. I had big problems with alk swings and much less lasting 'impact' from each dose than expected when I was doing it manually. I'd find deposits all over the walls and floor of my sump. I really should have invested in a doser sooner, and when I did, switching to dozens of tiny automatic doses each day, alk readings became much more uniform, somewhat in line with what I expected, and visible abiotic precipitation almost vanished. However, as my stocking has increased toward the 'heavy bioload' range, I've still had to add kalk and CO2 scrubbing to maintain both stable alk and the pH range I'd like.

rkpetersen · Aug 5, 2018

Darren Caballero said:
the recording at around 10 dkh was immediately after a large water change using Red Sea Pro salt, which has a naturally pretty high dkh.

I'd either switch to a salt that has a lower alk or do smaller water changes. That kind of acute shift can be deadly. I use Coral Pro myself and although I keep my alk about around 8.5-9, I don't see any measurable change in alk with each water change because it's only 5% at a time. (I wish I had a basement so I could set up even smaller daily automatic water changes.)

Darren Caballero · Aug 6, 2018

rkpetersen said:
I found manual dosing to cause a huge amount of abiotic precipitation. I had big problems with alk swings and much less lasting 'impact' from each dose than expected when I was doing it manually. I'd find deposits all over the walls and floor of my sump. I really should have invested in a doser sooner, and when I did, switching to dozens of tiny automatic doses each day, alk readings became much more uniform, somewhat in line with what I expected, and visible abiotic precipitation almost vanished. However, as my stocking has increased toward the 'heavy bioload' range, I've still had to add kalk and CO2 scrubbing to maintain both stable alk and the pH range I'd like.

Ok so since I’m off today and tomorrow I’ll try something different. I have a bunch of different syringes so I’ll manually simulate a doing pump to the best of my ability. Maybe 3 mil every half hour or something, I’ll do the math so it makes sense. I’ll only do alk. If what you are saying is correct, I suppose I should see an increase in alk instead of it staying the same.

Darren Caballero · Aug 6, 2018

rkpetersen said:
I'd either switch to a salt that has a lower alk or do smaller water changes. That kind of acute shift can be deadly. I use Coral Pro myself and although I keep my alk about around 8.5-9, I don't see any measurable change in alk with each water change because it's only 5% at a time. (I wish I had a basement so I could set up even smaller daily automatic water changes.)

Ya. Sorry I should have explained that better. I manually increased my whole tank’s dkh over the course of about a week before that water change. It just involved so much dosing and testing I wasn’t logging it like I should have. Just the result amounts. I always go for temp, PH, salinity and alk to be the same or similar with water changes.

Darren Caballero · Aug 24, 2018

Ok, I have a major update. I took a long time doing various experiments.

First I did a series of tests where I raised my alkalinity to a desired level (usually 8.5 or so) and then checked it again exactly 24 hours later. I did this while dosing fully saturated kalk, half saturated kalk and pure RO water using my Tunze ATO. I also mixed in days of manually emulating a doser as I described above. Honestly even at this point I think I was having some foreshadowing of my problem I’ll get to later, but at the very least, I concluded I needed to start dosing.

I bought a Jebao 4 channel doser and started dosing sodium bicarbonate and calcium. I placed an order on BRS for soda ash so I could start using that instead, but I did bicarbonate at first. I tried several different dosages and didn’t really get results I wanted. I decided to just leave it alone, because I knew that I would have to redo all my work once the soda ash came anyway.

TLDR Paragraph:
I started using the soda ash for about a week or so now. I started doing the same trial and error process to hone down what my tank needed and started seeing that pretty much no matter how much I would dose, my tank’s alk would plummet soon after at pretty much the same rate. So far instance, one particular day I got my tank to 8.5 dkh at 1pm and dosed 48ml of soda ash solution over the day. The next day at 1pm I was down to around 6.8 dkh. I repeated the same test but just for kicks I increased the dosage all the way to 96ml and over that 24 hour period it dropped from 8.5 to 7. Today as I write this I am trying at at 150ml just to be crazy, but I expect I’ll have the same result anyway. Oh and I am still dosing fully saturated kalkwasser with my ATO during all of these tests.

I dose into my sump and I have a jebao pump nearby blowing straight into the area the drops hit the water. From my visual inspection, I don’t see any precipitation happening.

Another thing I researched was that sand can somehow leach carbonate and calcium from the water and start to clump up. Honestly I am super terrible at stirring my sand but I decided to do it to see if I had this happening. In the back two corners I had a little bit of clumping but nothing very noteworthy.

My calcium is at around 420 and is dropping somewhat as I am tuning my dosages for it, but doesn’t seem to be happening nearly as fast as alk. Currently dosing 48ml of calcium chloride but I’m gonna try 73ml next to see if I get less drop off.

Magnesium is at 1520 according to a test this morning with brand new Red Sea reagent refills. I had old test materials for magnesium before and every time I ever tested it was over 1600 so I just assumed the bad reagents were causing that. This is the first time in recent memory I got a measurable result, but its still pretty high and I have never put any magnesium additives in my tank ever. Could be that my levels really are just super high, its hard to tell at this point.

Any ideas what could be happening to my tank?

Randy Holmes-Farley · Aug 25, 2018

Calcium carbonate can precipitate, especially on sand and rock, but also on anything warm like a pump or a heater. Stirring the sand won't stop that.

It is very likely that the actual demand you have in the tank is quite close to the expected ratio of about 1 meq/L (2.8 dKH) of alkalinity for each 18-20 ppm of calcium. Monitoring for 24 h will lead to false calcium demand values since no kit can reliable measure that small change expected in most tank. Just work to a final dosing value that works for you long term.

Water changes with a mix that doesn't match the tank is the main way that the demand appears to be skewed.

Darren Caballero · Aug 25, 2018

Randy Holmes-Farley said:
Water changes with a mix that doesn't match the tank is the main way that the demand appears to be skewed.

Ok I’ll keep trying to hone in on a number then.

Can you elaborate a bit on what you mean by the water change mix? Would you suggest using a salt mix that’s more modest with cal and alk and just raising it with dosing while I mix?

Randy Holmes-Farley · Aug 25, 2018

Darren Caballero said:
Ok I’ll keep trying to hone in on a number then.

Can you elaborate a bit on what you mean by the water change mix? Would you suggest using a salt mix that’s more modest with cal and alk and just raising it with dosing while I mix?

Many people use salt mixes that do not match their tank parameters. That's fine, as long as you recognize that it is messing with the relative (and absolute) amounts of calcium and alk you may need to add over time. Few, if any, mixes will benefit from additives. Those that do not match the tank are usually higher.

Darren Caballero · Aug 25, 2018

Randy Holmes-Farley said:
Many people use salt mixes that do not match their tank parameters. That's fine, as long as you recognize that it is messing with the relative (and absolute) amounts of calcium and alk you may need to add over time. Few, if any, mixes will benefit from additives. Those that do not match the tank are usually higher.

Ahh ok yes I see what you mean. Ok thank you for the help Randy!

Darren Caballero · Sep 14, 2018

So one final update for those who helped me or any reefers in the future who might find this thread.

So I’m a few weeks beyond my last post and I am about 99% sure I know what my problem was now. It was definitely excess precipitation and I believe it all had to do with my sand now.

I have been wanting to make my tank bare bottom for a while now. With some advice from a local reefer I removed all of it over the course of about 2 weeks. I did notice that very deep in the sand bed where I was never able to access before (like under rocks) the sand had developed into some pretty hard clumps like cat litter.

My dosage amounts plummeted from nearly 175ml per day all the way to 50ml per day basically immediately. I was not expecting this at all. I’m actually still dialing it all in and it’s possible my correct dosage might be even lower still.

I did some digging in my email archives and I purchased some new sand from Bulk Reef Supply about a month before my issues started arising. I did this because my sand he was getting thin from lost sand in water changes. And I also wanted to add in some larger grain sand so I could increase the flow in my tank.

I added “CaribSea SPECIAL GRADE ARAG-ALIVE! LIVE REEF SAND”. I’m not in any way saying that sand is bad or even this particular sand is bad, but somehow in my tank, with my chemistry and my combination of my old sand and this new one, I turned into a disaster.

So I am a happy clam now. My flow has never been higher in my display and I’m gonna be saving a ton of money on additives too. Thanks for all the help everyone!