I’m overdosing 2 part, what now?

Jaco2420 · Mar 26, 2020

I have been dosing b-ionic 2 part to my Red Sea reefer 170 (40 gallons water) 45ml a day and my levels were still slowly dropping. That is 2 dkh a day, and with barely any coralline algae and 2 sps frags with 8 lps frags it didn’t really make sense. I was just moving a coral to a different spot because it was getting too much flow and my sand bed was rock hard and took quite a lot of force to break back to normal. I lowered my dosage to 1 dkh (20ml) what do I do now to stop this problem? My levels have been stable at 155-160ppm (9 dkh alk) but I have been slowly increasing my dose. I know this is a noob mistake, it’s my first tank with sps. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you

Jaco2420 · Mar 26, 2020

Should this fix it?

jordan10 · Mar 26, 2020

do u dose in a high flow area?

redfishbluefish · Mar 26, 2020

What test kits? I'm thinking your alk and calc are higher then what you've been testing.

Hallowhead · Mar 26, 2020

You're having precipitation - make sure you're dosing alk and ca separately into a high flow area

rmurken · Mar 26, 2020

I bet the excess was calcifying your sand bed together, and that could have been eating up some of the alk you added. Sounds like you want to moderate the dosing and increase in response to alk changes.

Hallowhead · Mar 26, 2020

Hallowhead said:
You're having precipitation - make sure you're dosing alk and ca separately into a high flow area

when I say separately I mean at two different times don't have them being dosed at the same time. What I like to do is dose alkalinity 1 hour and then those calcium the next hour

rmurken · Mar 26, 2020

Hallowhead said:
when I say separately I mean at two different times don't have them being dosed at the same time. What I like to do is dose alkalinity 1 hour and then those calcium the next hour

No matter how far apart you dose them, they’ll still glue your sand together if levels are too high.

W1ngz · Mar 26, 2020

Stop all dosing and do a big water change. Leave it for 2 or 3 days to let things balance out, and test daily. Your levels will fall. Let them.

After a couple of days of testing, start dosing up only what has dropped daily according to your test, you'll have a good idea how much your average daily dose is. Give that a week. Once you have the daily maintenance dose, then consider whatever additional dose you need to move it back up to the levels you want to keep. Spread the additional dosing for the increase over 2 or 3 days.

Don't increase the dose unless testing over several days shows a need for it.
Dose directly into a powerhead or return flow.
Don't dose both parts in the same place, or at the same time.

Hallowhead · Mar 26, 2020

rmurken said:
No matter how far apart you dose them, they’ll still glue your sand together if levels are too high.

I'm not disagreeing that he wasn't dosing too much.

Jaco what you should be doing is not dossing anything for a one day and measuring the alk drop. Measure the same time each day

Jaco2420 · Mar 27, 2020

Thank you all for all the help! What I did was test my levels last night at 12:30am and I’m going to test tonight again at 12:30. I’m using Red Sea calcium pro test and Hanna alk, tested again with salifert. I was doing them 10 mins apart with a auto doser. I’m going to change it to 1 hour instead. Thank you everyone for helping me

Jaco2420 · Mar 27, 2020

And to add, I was dosing into a small power head in my refugium

jordan10 · Mar 27, 2020

Jaco2420 said:
Thank you all for all the help! What I did was test my levels last night at 12:30am and I’m going to test tonight again at 12:30. I’m using Red Sea calcium pro test and Hanna alk, tested again with salifert. I was doing them 10 mins apart with a auto doser. I’m going to change it to 1 hour instead. Thank you everyone for helping me

Make sure HIGH flow area to

Crustaceon · Mar 27, 2020

I’ve been through this and this is honestly what you should do. Stop all dosing for a week. Don’t worry about low dkh, don’t worry about your corals. They’ll be perfectly fine for that long. The problem is if you take a day or two off from dosing and then resume, you can still have some lingering precipitation that’ll snowball into the same problem again. Dkh NEEDS to fall until ph starts being impacted, which will break down precipitate crystals and will allow you to essentially have a “fresh start”. If your ph is 8.3-4 right now, it needs to get down to a ph of 8 or so. When you do start dosing again, start WAY lower than you’d expect. I’m talking 3-4ml alk/cal solution per day added at least 30 min apart. Test each day after that at the same time and increase/decrease by 1ml as needed every third day. Don’t be surprised if your actual alk consumption is only .10 dkh per day.

Jaco2420 · Mar 27, 2020

Crustaceon said:
I’ve been through this and this is honestly what you should do. Stop all dosing for a week. Don’t worry about low dkh, don’t worry about your corals. They’ll be perfectly fine for that long. The problem is if you take a day or two off from dosing and then resume, you can still have some lingering precipitation that’ll snowball into the same problem again. Dkh NEEDS to fall until ph starts being impacted, which will break down precipitate crystals and will allow you to essentially have a “fresh start”. If your ph is 8.3-4 right now, it needs to get down to a ph of 8 or so. When you do start dosing again, start WAY lower than you’d expect. I’m talking 3-4ml alk/cal solution per day added at least 30 min apart. Test each day after that at the same time and increase/decrease by 1ml as needed every third day. Don’t be surprised if your actual alk consumption is only .10 dkh per day.

Thank you for sharing your experience I’ll definitely try something like that if this doesn’t work

Jaco2420 · Mar 28, 2020

Okay so I have been dosing 45ml per day and I have come to the conclusion that my daily drop is 0.8 dkh. I’m going to dose 15 ml per day from now on

W1ngz · Mar 28, 2020

Jaco2420 said:
Okay so I have been dosing 45ml per day and I have come to the conclusion that my daily drop is 0.8 dkh. I’m going to dose 15 ml per day from now on

I think you missed the part where a few people suggested you let it fall for a few days.

homer1475 · Mar 28, 2020

Have you seen a reef calculator like this one?

http://reef.diesyst.com/chemcalc/chemcalc.html

According to that calc(works well, I've used it for years), for ESV B-ionic and 40G tank. To increase ALK by .08 requires 69.4ml.

Jaco2420 · Mar 28, 2020

W1ngz said:
I think you missed the part where a few people suggested you let it fall for a few days.

I said I tested at 12:30am then 12:30am tonight. I let it fall for one day, from the additional research I did most people agree that it good.

Jaco2420 · Mar 28, 2020

homer1475 said:
Have you seen a reef calculator like this one?

http://reef.diesyst.com/chemcalc/chemcalc.html

According to that calc(works well, I've used it for years), for ESV B-ionic and 40G tank. To increase ALK by .08 requires 69.4ml.

No it doesn’t it says 15mL