Sps Nightmare

[Charlie’s Frags]

I woke up this morning and heard my kamoer dosing continuously running and discovered it had added over 750 ml of alk. I quickly ripped out as much sps as I could and placed them in my frag tank. I know they were exposed to the alk spike for less than 6 hours, but I’m guessing the alk is at least 40 dKh and could be as high 60 dKh. My Hanna checker is flashing 20. I had to make a delivery for work and am back home about to do a massive water change as soon as the new water temp comes down a bit.

 

[SeaDweller]

I hope all is well bud. Thought it was gonna be another troll thread.

 

[Aquanautical]

Id say do lots of small changes, the massive swing down could be as harmful as the massive swing up, but Geez 40 is scary man good luck

 

[BeejReef]

dang! I have that pump, but haven't set it up or started using it yet. Any insight into what caused the OD?

 

[SeaDweller]

Id say do lots of small changes, the massive swing down could be as harmful as the massive swing up, but Geez 40 is scary man good luck

If his alk is indeed that high, then small changes wouldn’t help cuz it’ll remain high for a while before he gets back to 7-8 dKh. I’d do a 100% WC on a tank that size.

 

[jda]

You can lower the alk on freshly mixed saltwater with muratic acid, but it takes a day, or so, to get the pH back up. Mabye mix a few batches with one for now and some for tomorrow. I have moved freshly mixed alk down to 4.0 before without disturbing the other characteristics of the water.

Is carbonate not precipitating from the water?

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

I just changed at least 75% of the volume with tmpro, that brought it down to 12.5. Surprisingly, to me at least, there are not more casualties at this time. All the zoas, and palys, fish, and a couple larger sps encrusted colonies that I did not have time to remove all look perfectly fine. There’s only one obvious Tenuis loss in the frag tank so far, but everything else looks as happy as they did before the disaster. Fingers crossed.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

I hope all is well bud. Thought it was gonna be another troll thread.

No joke. It happened sometime between 12:30 and 6:30. I’m praying I was lucky and got them to the frag tank in time.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

You can lower the alk on freshly mixed saltwater with muratic acid, but it takes a day, or so, to get the pH back up. Mabye mix a few batches with one for now and some for tomorrow. I have moved freshly mixed alk down to 4.0 before without disturbing the other characteristics of the water.

Is carbonate not precipitating from the water?

I didn’t notice any precipitation.

 

[jda]

Keep checking every day. If you stressed anything, your consumption will go down quite a bit and you will likely need to change the alk and calcium dosing.

Also, when you are past crisis mode, be sure and post what caused the Kaomer to stay on so that others can learn... this can wait until another day when things are more back to normal.

 

[SeaDweller]

No joke. It happened sometime between 12:30 and 6:30. I’m praying I was lucky and got them to the frag tank in time.

Your plan of action is what I would have done too because your tank wasn’t exposed for that long, so to me a large WC makes the most sense to correct the issue quickly. Good job bud

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

Your plan of action is what I would have done too because your tank wasn’t exposed for that long, so to me a large WC makes the most sense to correct the issue quickly. Good job bud

Thank the coral lord I had the second tank set up. Now the waiting/observing game begins.

A couple quick pics of the frag garden

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

Keep checking every day. If you stressed anything, your consumption will go down quite a bit and you will likely need to change the alk and calcium dosing.

Also, when you are past crisis mode, be sure and post what caused the Kaomer to stay on so that others can learn... this can wait until another day when things are more back to normal.

It seems the doser just completely malfunctioned it was still running when I woke up and the container was empty. I had to unplug it to stop the madness. I tried plugging it back in when I got back home to perform the water change and it’s still trying to run non stop.

 

[rushbattle]

This is literally my nightmare. No desire for a calcium reactor, but the thought of dumping a full container of hydroxide into the tank scares me to death.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

This is literally my nightmare. No desire for a calcium reactor, but the thought of dumping a full container of hydroxide into the tank scares me to death.

Ditto. But at least the manufacturer has sent me shipping label to return it.

 

[motortrendz]

After that I wouldn't want to replace it I wouldnt want anything from that company. That's just scary. My dad had an issue with a doser doing the same thing. One reason I always manually dosed. I did eventually get a calcium reactor. And now I made slight adjustments once a week. Bc of increased uptake. Hope everything does well. What survived may just bleach a bit but will color back up in time.

 

[SeaDweller]

It seems the doser just completely malfunctioned it was still running when I woke up and the container was empty. I had to unplug it to stop the madness. I tried plugging it back in when I got back home to perform the water change and it’s still trying to run non stop.

Why haven’t you considered a CaRx? Ever since I switched to jda’s method of CO2 injection, the alk has been more stable than when on a controller. Less failure points with the CaRx now.

Your failure is what scared me into not using a doser anymore, for that reason alone.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

Why haven’t you considered a CaRx? Ever since I switched to jda’s method of CO2 injection, the alk has been more stable than when on a controller. Less failure points with the CaRx now.

Your failure is what scared me into not using a doser anymore, for that reason alone.

I actually just recently (8 hours ago) thought I should get a CaRx

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

After that I wouldn't want to replace it I wouldnt want anything from that company. That's just scary. My dad had an issue with a doser doing the same thing. One reason I always manually dosed. I did eventually get a calcium reactor. And now I made slight adjustments once a week. Bc of increased uptake. Hope everything does well. What survived may just bleach a bit but will color back up in time.

I will not be using any doser every again after this. Back to manual for now while I research CaRx that will match my tiny system.

 

[bubbaque]

This happened to brs on their 160 and I believe everything turned out to be fine. They have a video on it and what they did to fix the issue if you want to take a look.