beachsidereefer
Active Member
Hi All,
The reason I'm posting this is I hope to accomplish two things:
1. A newbie like me will save themselves a whole lot of pain, suffering and time by learning from my method and mistakes!
2. The senior members can review and audit what I've done. Please poke as many holes as possible so the system can be improved!
At the beginning of 2016 I decided to make a solid effort to finally balance out my ALK/ CA and MG levels in my 200 gallon display tank. first off, I'm no expert... far from it! I've had many ups and downs and sadly, killed off some really nice stuff. When I reflected on '15 I realized that I was stuck in a cycle of depleting CA/ ALK. Attempting to re balance/ replenish, then depletion all over again. I saw the negative effects of this as my PH was always on the low side (7.9-8.0) my stony corals seemed to struggle with no growth or color. this happened even though I had a RKE unit and 2 part dosers which I spent a lot of time tweaking but not accomplishing stability with the ALK/CA values.
So with a lot of help from R2R membership and the Jedi Master, Randy Holmes Farley, I've come up with the following system that is delivering the results I've been hoping for.
system set up.
200 G DT and approx. 20 gallon sump.
Automation; Reef Keeper Elite with USB connector so i can see trends on a laptop.
Dosers (2) - DP1 - ALK and CA using BRS two part Soda Ash and Calcium
chloride
Doser (1) - BRS - 1.1 ML/ minute - Kalk/ Lime water.
PH Probe - RKE
Salinity Probe RKE -
step 1.
Test and document CA, ALK and MG levels. Adjust the levels up to where you want them to be which for me was Salinity 35 PPT, ALK - 9 dKH, CA- 430 PPM and 1300 MG. I really like the BRS on-line calculator as it's easy to use and it works well on a smart phone.
Lessons learned.
1. don't focus to much on hitting the exact number. I made this mistake and realized my engineering mindset had me chasing numbers. Just get close and don't worry if you're off by 1 dKH or 10 PPM.
2. First balance MG, then CA and finally ALK! If you add ALK too quickly you will have precipitation and will need to start the process all over again. How I handled this was I used my BRS doser (1.1 ML / minute) to slowly add the soda ash solution. I keep an eye on PH and if it went above 8.3 I turned it off until it dropped back to 8.2.
step 2
Wait three days and measure CA, ALK and MG. Subtract this from your values you balanced to in step 1. Divide this by 3 and now you have your daily consumption. My experience was the CA and ALK values dropped to 398 PPM CA 5 dkh ALK and MG stayed roughly the same. So my daily consumption is roughly 1 dKH and 1o PPM
Step 3
Use the data from step 2 and the BRS calculator to figure out how much 2- part you should dose on a daily basis.
lessons learned.
1. properly calibrated 2- part dosers are the key! I spent over a hour calibrating my DP1's to dose exactly 10 ML over a 30 second run time.
2. I set up the dose schedule to run over a 24 hour period. I've read that some folks like to dose only when the lights are off but I didn't follow this recommendation. I dose the total consumption amount equally over a 24 hour period.
Step 4
since you've not dosed over the past three days to figure out your daily drop you need to re balance. So repeat step 1! Now activate your dosing schedule you developed on step 3 and now you are putting into the tank approx. what your corals are consuming.
Step 5
Retest after three days and see if there's a drop. I observed my values slipped roughly by 1 dKH and 10 PPM so this affirmed that I was pretty close to my daily consumption and now it's time to bring in the lime water.
step 6
Remember I mentioned my PH was always low? So after asking questions on R2R and reading a lot of posts I thought I would try using lime water because it's a balanced solution for dosing ALK and CA plus it elevates PH.
Using the third doser (BRS) I started dosing lime water at a 100 ML per day. Now at this point I am winging it a bit, there's risk that I could drive PH up to high and nuke the tank. So RKE has a handy feature called alarms. I set a alarm to trip if PH rose above 8.2 and I tagged the BRS doser to turn off if the alarm triggers.
Next I used the graphing feature of the RKE on my laptop so I could see the overall trend of PH during a 24 hour period. when I started to dose my PH was hovering around 8.0, first 24 hours I saw no change so i doubled the dosing schedule. now I started to see results! PH slowly started to climb which I could see on the graph. After a little more tweaking over the course of 5 days I achieved my goal of bumping up against the alarm and as expected, the doser did not run when the alarm activated.
So you might ask why did I pick 8.2 vs. 8.3. The reason is I want to have a bit of safety margin. Over time the RKE PH probe looses it's calibration and it will drift on the readings. My re calibration schedule is once a month and it's usually off by +/- 0.1 -0.2. So if calibration drifts I won't over dose the tank
Step 7
Retest CA/ ALK and MG three days after you activate the lime water dosing schedule. What I found was my CA levels starts to creep up to 450 PPM and my ALK stayed at 8 dKH and MG had a slight decrease. Based on this I turned off my CA doser for 48 hours so some of the CA would be consumed (remember my tank consumption was approx. 10 PPM/ day ) and reduced the amount of CA dosed going forward.
step 8
Repeat step 7 and continue to tweak as needed. Since 2 - part will slowly raise salinity over time I'm using the graph to keep to monitor the data from the salinity probe. So far my consumption of MG has been low so I'm looking to use my monthly water changes to replenish. I suspect, at some point, the growth of coralline algae will hit a point where I'll need to start dosing MG.
Results:
Coralline algae is now a deep purple color and is growing rapidly. My few stony corals have new growth where before it seemed like they were just on life support. PH is stable at 8.2, ALK stays above 8 dKH and calcium above 430. You'll recall that originally my goal was a 9 dKH but it seems like my tank likes to stay closer to 8 so I'm not going to try and push it up. This goes back to my earlier comment of not chasing numbers.
I hope this helps and looking forward to hearing what you all think (positive and negative) on this system I've put together.
The reason I'm posting this is I hope to accomplish two things:
1. A newbie like me will save themselves a whole lot of pain, suffering and time by learning from my method and mistakes!
2. The senior members can review and audit what I've done. Please poke as many holes as possible so the system can be improved!
At the beginning of 2016 I decided to make a solid effort to finally balance out my ALK/ CA and MG levels in my 200 gallon display tank. first off, I'm no expert... far from it! I've had many ups and downs and sadly, killed off some really nice stuff. When I reflected on '15 I realized that I was stuck in a cycle of depleting CA/ ALK. Attempting to re balance/ replenish, then depletion all over again. I saw the negative effects of this as my PH was always on the low side (7.9-8.0) my stony corals seemed to struggle with no growth or color. this happened even though I had a RKE unit and 2 part dosers which I spent a lot of time tweaking but not accomplishing stability with the ALK/CA values.
So with a lot of help from R2R membership and the Jedi Master, Randy Holmes Farley, I've come up with the following system that is delivering the results I've been hoping for.
system set up.
200 G DT and approx. 20 gallon sump.
Automation; Reef Keeper Elite with USB connector so i can see trends on a laptop.
Dosers (2) - DP1 - ALK and CA using BRS two part Soda Ash and Calcium
chloride
Doser (1) - BRS - 1.1 ML/ minute - Kalk/ Lime water.
PH Probe - RKE
Salinity Probe RKE -
step 1.
Test and document CA, ALK and MG levels. Adjust the levels up to where you want them to be which for me was Salinity 35 PPT, ALK - 9 dKH, CA- 430 PPM and 1300 MG. I really like the BRS on-line calculator as it's easy to use and it works well on a smart phone.
Lessons learned.
1. don't focus to much on hitting the exact number. I made this mistake and realized my engineering mindset had me chasing numbers. Just get close and don't worry if you're off by 1 dKH or 10 PPM.
2. First balance MG, then CA and finally ALK! If you add ALK too quickly you will have precipitation and will need to start the process all over again. How I handled this was I used my BRS doser (1.1 ML / minute) to slowly add the soda ash solution. I keep an eye on PH and if it went above 8.3 I turned it off until it dropped back to 8.2.
step 2
Wait three days and measure CA, ALK and MG. Subtract this from your values you balanced to in step 1. Divide this by 3 and now you have your daily consumption. My experience was the CA and ALK values dropped to 398 PPM CA 5 dkh ALK and MG stayed roughly the same. So my daily consumption is roughly 1 dKH and 1o PPM
Step 3
Use the data from step 2 and the BRS calculator to figure out how much 2- part you should dose on a daily basis.
lessons learned.
1. properly calibrated 2- part dosers are the key! I spent over a hour calibrating my DP1's to dose exactly 10 ML over a 30 second run time.
2. I set up the dose schedule to run over a 24 hour period. I've read that some folks like to dose only when the lights are off but I didn't follow this recommendation. I dose the total consumption amount equally over a 24 hour period.
Step 4
since you've not dosed over the past three days to figure out your daily drop you need to re balance. So repeat step 1! Now activate your dosing schedule you developed on step 3 and now you are putting into the tank approx. what your corals are consuming.
Step 5
Retest after three days and see if there's a drop. I observed my values slipped roughly by 1 dKH and 10 PPM so this affirmed that I was pretty close to my daily consumption and now it's time to bring in the lime water.
step 6
Remember I mentioned my PH was always low? So after asking questions on R2R and reading a lot of posts I thought I would try using lime water because it's a balanced solution for dosing ALK and CA plus it elevates PH.
Using the third doser (BRS) I started dosing lime water at a 100 ML per day. Now at this point I am winging it a bit, there's risk that I could drive PH up to high and nuke the tank. So RKE has a handy feature called alarms. I set a alarm to trip if PH rose above 8.2 and I tagged the BRS doser to turn off if the alarm triggers.
Next I used the graphing feature of the RKE on my laptop so I could see the overall trend of PH during a 24 hour period. when I started to dose my PH was hovering around 8.0, first 24 hours I saw no change so i doubled the dosing schedule. now I started to see results! PH slowly started to climb which I could see on the graph. After a little more tweaking over the course of 5 days I achieved my goal of bumping up against the alarm and as expected, the doser did not run when the alarm activated.
So you might ask why did I pick 8.2 vs. 8.3. The reason is I want to have a bit of safety margin. Over time the RKE PH probe looses it's calibration and it will drift on the readings. My re calibration schedule is once a month and it's usually off by +/- 0.1 -0.2. So if calibration drifts I won't over dose the tank
Step 7
Retest CA/ ALK and MG three days after you activate the lime water dosing schedule. What I found was my CA levels starts to creep up to 450 PPM and my ALK stayed at 8 dKH and MG had a slight decrease. Based on this I turned off my CA doser for 48 hours so some of the CA would be consumed (remember my tank consumption was approx. 10 PPM/ day ) and reduced the amount of CA dosed going forward.
step 8
Repeat step 7 and continue to tweak as needed. Since 2 - part will slowly raise salinity over time I'm using the graph to keep to monitor the data from the salinity probe. So far my consumption of MG has been low so I'm looking to use my monthly water changes to replenish. I suspect, at some point, the growth of coralline algae will hit a point where I'll need to start dosing MG.
Results:
Coralline algae is now a deep purple color and is growing rapidly. My few stony corals have new growth where before it seemed like they were just on life support. PH is stable at 8.2, ALK stays above 8 dKH and calcium above 430. You'll recall that originally my goal was a 9 dKH but it seems like my tank likes to stay closer to 8 so I'm not going to try and push it up. This goes back to my earlier comment of not chasing numbers.
I hope this helps and looking forward to hearing what you all think (positive and negative) on this system I've put together.
