Reefinmike
Active Member
- Joined
- Sep 13, 2018
- Messages
- 360
- Reaction score
- 339
- What state or country do you live in
- Ohio
Hey all, I restarted my tank three months ago and unfortunately started with a bad batch of instant ocean that had 560ppm calcium, 1900ppm mg and 10dkh alk. I have not dosed one bit of calcium but I have kept my alkalinity around 9.5 for 2.5 months. My corals seemed to only use about .2dkh of alk per day and I dosed .5 dkh worth of sodium carbonate every 2-3 days to maintain the levels. Calcium was dropping painfully slow. About a month ago I did a water change bringing the calcium down to ~510. Coralline, spiroids and feather dusters really started taking off. After seeing a BRS video about the benefits they saw with elevated alk and calcium I started to slowly raise my alkalinity. I started off dosing .5dkh(3.9g) sodium carbonate per day only to find the alkalinity back where it started a day later. I made several jumps up by dosing 1dkh a day to reach 10.5dkh. Dosing .5dkh a day for 4-5 days seemed to keep the alkalinity stable. The past few days I have been trying to bump it up to 11dkh or higher. I dosed 1dkh the past three days raising the alkalinity but after testing today the alkalinity was lower than yesterday before dosing. It seems like the more I dose, the more the tank uses. The coralline, spiroids, feather dusters and my baby trochus snails have easily doubled in size/population the past two weeks. Coral growth has been good the past month but I cant say I see a noticeable difference as I increased my alkalinity. It almost seems that the higher my alkalinity, the more I need to add to maintain it and calcium keeps dropping. The water isn't foggy, I drip my doses in a high flow area daily for 3-4 hours. I always test before dosing but rarely immediately after. The maintenance events in the graph signify when I dose. I dont see any dusting or buildup on equipment as a clear sign of elements precipitating out but I have a funny feeling that is the case. my alkalinity usage is 4-5x what it was a month ago. Any thoughts?
