I failed chemistry class

[DRCOOK97]

Good evening. Not new to the hobby but have a newer tank. Past cycling and been placing corals in now for a month. System is 80 gallons total. I have been doing water changes on average every 5 days roughly 12%. Test my parameters today my cal. Is 380 dkh is 7 and mag. 1200ish. How do I raise these back up and what could have dropped them so fast? I did get saltwater from a different fish store wondering if they had a weak mix? Was using small doses of Kalk dripped into my ato. I also have no coraline algae. Could it be taking off and absorbing really quickly. No big colonies of corals btw. Thanks in advance.

 

[lapin]

Maybe your salt water supply is not up to snuff as you suggest.
I would test this first.

 

[rennjidk]

Good evening. Not new to the hobby but have a newer tank. Past cycling and been placing corals in now for a month. System is 80 gallons total. I have been doing water changes on average every 5 days roughly 12%. Test my parameters today my cal. Is 380 dkh is 7 and mag. 1200ish. How do I raise these back up and what could have dropped them so fast? I did get saltwater from a different fish store wondering if they had a weak mix? Was using small doses of Kalk dripped into my ato. I also have no coraline algae. Could it be taking off and absorbing really quickly. No big colonies of corals btw. Thanks in advance.

What makes you believe that WCs can keep up with the corals you've added? Once corals go into the tank, you need to start replenishing what they consume.

Test your parameters. The next day, test at the exact same time. The difference is your daily usage. Use one of the several calculators and the method of your choice (in this case limewater) to offset that amount.

 

[DRCOOK97]

3 heads of torch, or 5 1" pieces of monti, 10 1" acros, couple of zoa frags, and 2 small chalice frag would be absorbing that much?

 

[rennjidk]

3 heads of torch, or 5 1" pieces of monti, 10 1" acros, couple of zoa frags, and 2 small chalice frag would be absorbing that much?

Yes.

 

[crazyfishmom]

3 heads of torch, or 5 1" pieces of monti, 10 1" acros, couple of zoa frags, and 2 small chalice frag would be absorbing that much?

Honestly that’s not super far off from most salt mixes. If they use instant ocean that’s very close except for the alkalinity. I might suggest a few water changes with tropic marin pro reef to get you back to a nice range and then dialing in each of the big three to where you want them with single dose additives.

 

[DRCOOK97]

Thanks Crayfishmom. That's what I was thinking. Been out of the hobby a few years. My other LFS uses Fitz reef pro and thats what I started with and was dead on. That combined with what rennjidk said as far early coral consumption and probably early corline algae was what I was suspecting. Looks like I'm buy my h2o from the other LFS. Thanks for the confirmation .

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

In general, raising parameters by water change is far, far more expensive than doing so by dosing. I don't see why one would go that route.

Let's back up and explore this a bit.

What is the salinity? Measured how?

Low salinity is quite common and drives all of those 3 down.

 

[Troylee]

Check your salinity.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I failed chemistry class

One of the things I occasionally do in this forum is tell chemistry stories to keep it from being too dry.

I have taken many chemistry classes and never failed one, but...

Back when I was in college (Stanford, 1979), I was taking two chemistry classes at the beginning of my sophomore year. One was a lab course, a large fraction of which was to identify an unknown organic compound. Try as I might, I was just not figuring out what it was. Perhaps I missed something obvious, or perhaps some of the data I was given to help was not correct. It should not have been nearly that hard.

At the same time, my high school girlfriend (now my wife) and I were deciding we wanted to be at the same college, and we settled on both transferring to Cornell (she was at Kalamazoo college).

In looking closely at the requirements for chemistry majors at Cornell, I could see that the lab class at Stanford would not be useful since their lab requirements were different and this one did not fit neatly into their list of requirements.

As it become later and later in the quarter and I was at risk of getting a seriously low grade in a class where I couldn't figure out the unknown, I dropped the class on the last day it was allowed to do so without it showing on your transcript.

The plan worked. The bad class never showed up on a transcript, Cornell worked out great, and I am still married to her.

Moral of the story: everyone has troubles in chemistry at some point.

 

[threebuoys]

I failed chemistry class

One of the things I occasionally do in this forum is tell chemistry stories to keep it from being too dry.

I have taken many chemistry classes and never failed one, but...

Back when I was in college (Stanford, 1979), I was taking two chemistry classes at the beginning of my sophomore year. One was a lab course, a large fraction of which was to identify an unknown organic compound. Try as I might, I was just not figuring out what it was. Perhaps I missed something obvious, or perhaps some of the data I was given to help was not correct. It should not have been nearly that hard.

At the same time, my high school girlfriend (now my wife) and I were deciding we wanted to be at the same college, and we settled on both transferring to Cornell (she was at Kalamazoo college).

In looking closely at the requirements for chemistry majors at Cornell, I could see that the lab class at Stanford would not be useful since their lab requirements were different and this one did not fit neatly into their list of requirements.

As it become later and later in the quarter and I was at risk of getting a seriously low grade in a class where I couldn't figure out the unknown, I dropped the class on the last day it was allowed to do so without it showing on your transcript.

The plan worked. The bad class never showed up on a transcript, Cornell worked out great, and I am still married to her.

Moral of the story: everyone has troubles in chemistry at some point.

Sounds like maybe you were working on a different kind of chemistry at Stanford which resulted in a positive reaction at Cornell.

 

[Devisissy]

I did too, didn't stop me from getting a Bachelor's.

 

[DRCOOK97]

In general, raising parameters by water change is far, far more expensive than doing so by dosing. I don't see why one would go that route.

Let's back up and explore this a bit.

What is the salinity? Measured how?

Low salinity is quite common and drives all of those 3 down.

Salinity was measured at home and store using refractometer in both scenarios.

 

[jda]

I learned more chemistry from Advanced Aquarist back in the day than I ever did in school - no chemistry in college at all. Why would I take something hard like Chemistry when I could take Theory of Automata, Chaos Theory and Operating Systems (not learning an OS but writing one down to the machine code of entry/exit linkage and floating point math with only 8 registers).

I still probably could not pass a Chem 101 class. Fortunately, nobody needs to have a great reef tank.

Reefing Chemistry 101 First Chapter would be: supplement manufacturer chemistry is not real chemistry.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Salinity was measured at home and store using refractometer in both scenarios.

And what was it?

 

[DRCOOK97]

And what was it?

1.024

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

1.024

Assuming the 380 and 1200 ppm were accurate, then if you raised the salinity to 35 ppt (sg = 1.0264) then the values become 418 ppm and 1320 ppm, which are both perfectly reasonable values.

 

[DRCOOK97]

Assuming the 380 and 1200 ppm were accurate, then if you raised the salinity to 35 ppt (sg = 1.0264) then the values become 418 ppm and 1320 ppm, which are both perfectly reasonable values.

Thanks so much I never really thought about the density of concentration due to salinity changes. This seems more realistic and makes more sense. This is why I like to double check fish store info. I really appreciate your time and expertise. Cheers.

 

[bratfink]

I failed chemistry class

One of the things I occasionally do in this forum is tell chemistry stories to keep it from being too dry.

I have taken many chemistry classes and never failed one, but...
……


The plan worked. The bad class never showed up on a transcript, Cornell worked out great, and I am still married to her.

Moral of the story: everyone has troubles in chemistry at some point.

Randy, I have a similar story in my bachelors Eng degree where I had to deliberately fail my favorite class in order to secure a 1st. I was scoring well in the class (near the top), but the in class work didn’t count to the grade, it all hinged on the final exam. The class only made up a small percentage on the overall degree and I needed to get a larger project completed at the same time that made a larger percentage of the final mark. The gamble paid off and I got a scholarship to Cranfield for my masters.

 

[Dom]

What makes you believe that WCs can keep up with the corals you've added? Once corals go into the tank, you need to start replenishing what they consume.

And that is why we do water changes; for two reasons:

1. To export nutrients.

2. To replenish what is consumed by the tank.

Granted, water changes will only be effective at first. But as your corals grow, they will consume more than what water changes provide. Thats where dosing comes in.