Possible Tank Crash! ALK Overdose!! Please Help!

[tylr9m482]

SO I woke up this morning and my tank is completely cloudy and white. At first I thought my anemone got in a pump and nuked the tank but I found my BRS 1.1ml Alk doser failed and has been running on 1.1ml since 2AM!!! That's 6.5 hours! PH on apex read 8.6 around 5am and coming down slowly, 8.4 now.

I'm mixing up a batch of 25 gallons of saltwater for a water change, (I have a 75 gal tank with 50 gallon sump) but should I be expecting the worse? I have lots of LPS and Soft corals, yellow tag, reef angel, starry blenny and clown fish (he is the only one I can see swimming next to the glass). Also a clam that i can see is all closed up. Not sure if I should take the new salt water and try to make a hospital tank in an empty 20 gal I have or just do the water change.

Please help, I don't want to make a knee jerk reaction but I don't want to set back and wait for it to clear up if everything is going to die in the meantime.. I'm going to test my alk reading in a moment so we have a better idea of that.

 

[Webslinger]

8.4 is fine I run mine at 10

 

[tylr9m482]

PH is 8.4 is fine yes, my concern is the amount of ALK 2 part that is currently so thick in my tank I can't see last 2 inches.. I haven't tested Alk yet, I normally run between 10.5-11dkh. I'm sure it is much higher now

 

[Webslinger]

Water change.

 

[tylr9m482]

Yup, currently mixing a 25 gal brute. Should I be worried about massive loss in the tank??

 

[Nburg's Reef]

Go slow. I left mine in and my alk went from 8.5 to 16. I let it come down naturally with very small water changes every 2 days. Within 5 days everything was normal and only had 1 SPS colony brown up and loose tissue on the undersides. Growth slowed for a bit but nothing died. let me dig up the thread of me freaking out which may help calm you a bit as well.

I would test your Alk now and then do a standard water change and see how quickly it drops naturally.

 

[Webslinger]

Depends on how high it got. But probably not. That's why I use Kalk in ato.....haha

 

[tylr9m482]

DKH is over 14 right now, RED Sea Alk Pro test kit. It took 1.2ml to get the color change, the test kit only reads up to 1ml as 14dkh so not sure of the exact number but I would bet around 16 based on how the kit chart reads.

 

[Nburg's Reef]

SPS Tank: 2 part dosers stuck on, kH jumped from 8 to 15.... what should I do

Should I try to bring it down with h2o changes or do slow water changes and let it drop naturally? My acros have been looking great lately and now I think I may have messed up big time. Dosers ran from like 2 pm until like 7:30pm. Tank is around 60 total gallons. So far, nothing looks out of...

www.reef2reef.com

Read this thread as I was in the same boat as you. from 10 to 14-16 is not that bad There is some good advice from others there starting at around post #16.

Maybe reduce your lighting period for a week or 2.

 

[tylr9m482]

Go slow. I left mine in and my alk went from 8.5 to 16. I let it come down naturally with very small water changes every 2 days. Within 5 days everything was normal and only had 1 SPS colony brown up and loose tissue on the undersides. Growth slowed for a bit but nothing died. let me dig up the thread of me freaking out which may help calm you a bit as well.

I would test your Alk now and then do a standard water change and see how quickly it drops naturally.

That's what I was hoping to hear, hopefully I have similar results... I am letting the salt mix for a few hours and I will do a 20 gallon water change today followed with 5-10 gallons every other day and continue to test each day.

Depends on how high it got. But probably not. That's why I use Kalk in ato.....haha

Maybe I need to look into that! Haha. I think one of my apex outlets might have broken and got stuck 'ON' , I'll have to do some testing after work but for now the doser is unplugged form the wall

 

[Nburg's Reef]

Here's a quote from my thread from Randy who is the resident SW chemist

In my precipitate article (and others), I detail emergency procedures for a limewater overdose, which is similar but not exactly the same since it boosts pH a lot more, typically, than a simple alk overdose, and adds calcium, and nearly always results in cloudy water:

What is that Precipitate in My Reef Aquarium? by Randy Holmes-Farley - Reefkeeping.com
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-07/rhf/index.htm

The following important points should help in dealing with a limewater overdose:

1. Don't panic! These overdoses do not usually cause a tank to crash.

2. The primary concern is pH. If the pH is 8.6 or lower, you need not do anything. If the pH is above 8.6, then reducing the pH is the priority. Direct addition of vinegar or soda water is a good way to accomplish this goal. Either one mL of distilled white vinegar, or six mL of soda water, per gallon of tank water will give an initial pH drop of about 0.3 pH units. Add either to a high flow area that is away from organisms (e.g., a sump).

3. Do not bother to measure calcium or alkalinity while the tank is cloudy. The solid calcium carbonate particles will dissolve in an alkalinity test, and all of the carbonate in them will be counted as if it were in solution and part of "alkalinity." The same may happen to some extent with calcium tests. Wait until the water clears, and at that point, alkalinity is more likely to be low than high. Calcium will likely be mostly unchanged.

4. The particles themselves will typically settle out and disappear from view over a period of 1-4 days. They do not appear to cause long term detrimental effects to tank organisms.

5. Water changes are not necessarily beneficial or needed in response to a limewater overdose.

 

[Nburg's Reef]

Trying to drop it too fast is another swing and may make things worse. I would do a water change and test daily to see if it drops naturally.

 

[tylr9m482]

Here's a quote from my thread from Randy who is the resident SW chemist

Thank you for all this material! I think I will do the 25gal water change once the water is mixed up and then test and do small WCs over the next week or two, to get it back down and then take it from there. I was worried the tank was completely crashed when I saw it first thing this morning and went into panic mode!!!

 

[Nburg's Reef]

Good luck! I think you should be okay as long as you don't do anything drastic. Slow and steady

 

[m_t_r_86]

That's what I was hoping to hear, hopefully I have similar results... I am letting the salt mix for a few hours and I will do a 20 gallon water change today followed with 5-10 gallons every other day and continue to test each day.



Maybe I need to look into that! Haha. I think one of my apex outlets might have broken and got stuck 'ON' , I'll have to do some testing after work but for now the doser is unplugged form the wall

I found that if you're using the Apex Classic EB8, you need to use outlets 4 & 8. Outlets 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 will stay in the on position, even when the outlet is turned off.

 

[tylr9m482]

I found that if you're using the Apex Classic EB8, you need to use outlets 4 & 8. Outlets 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 will stay in the on position, even when the outlet is turned off.

Not sure if the black label and orange/white label are both classic, I have the orange and white label. Not sure what you mean the other outlets stay in the "on" position even when off. Wouldn't that mean those outlets are unusable from an apex stand point? Currently my Calcium doser is on outlet 2 (never had a problem her) and Alk is on outlet 7, only had an issue the night of the original post. Can you elaborate?

 

[tylr9m482]

I just did a test on the doser again and it continued dosing past the time it was programmed. I had to physically unplug it to stop. I copy and pasted my calc program. Anyone see an issue with this list of commands? All I did was change the time to 19:05-19:06 to test it right now for a minute but i continued for about 3 minutes before I pulled the plug.

Set OFF
Fallback OFF
If Time 02:00 to 02:10 Then ON

 

[tylr9m482]

Just tested outlets 6 and 7, both failed at turning the pump off even when the switch on my apex homepage said it was OFF. I hooked the doser up to Outlet 2, what my cal doser is on, and it worked correctly. I am thinking those two outlets might be busted? I had my two radions hooked up to those two outlets for a few years but recently decided to move them since I have them programmed to my WXM anyway, but not I am not sure if the outlets they were in just got used to having something in them that possibly never turned off? I honestly don't remember if I had them turn off at a certain time of night or just through the WXM ramped them down all the way. I think I had them set on all the time just with a safety code line to turn off if the tank ever overheated. Any thoughts to this?

Also side note but for anyone who might have been wondering about the tank. We had a full recovery with 0 fish/coral loss. A few small water changes over the past week and everything is back in good shape, the calcium dropped down to 375 so I am working on bringing that back up to 425 where I was running previously and the tank is ready to start dosing alk again... If I can figure what is going wrong here!

 

[dwest]

@rkpetersen Are Apex problems your specialty?