Ideal Alk. reading?

[ahayes13]

what is your ideal alkalinity reading? what is your target #?

i am trying to figure out the best # to try to keep my tank at. im working on figuring out my system and its usage. so was just curious....

 

[Chris22582]

I keep my tank at 3.5 meg

 

[bellareef]

Natural seawater is ~2.5 meq/l or 7dKH. However, it's probably better to have higher alk in a reef tank, so up to 4.4 meq/l or ~12 dKH. I keep about 11 dKH, as I notice some color decrease in some sps colonies (in my tank) below 9 dKH.

Some folks doing ultra low nutrient proprietary methods have problems with high alk, so try to stay at nsw levels. I don't like proprietary methodology, but that's just a personal opinion.

It's important to know that alk changes much faster than Ca, so best to dose alk continuously thru the day, while Ca is ok to dose daily. Stable parameters are better than trying to target a certain parameter.

Hope that helps.