Tips for recovering from an kalkwasser overdose

[Chameleon]

Background:
So about a month ago my ATO that I saturate with kalk had run out and the water level in the part of my sump with the float switch had fallen about an inch. Normally when this happens I fill the reservoir and then move the float switch up and down because when the water level falls for any length of time it normally gets stuck with salt creep. Well I left out the moving the float switch step, but just filled the ATO reservoir with fresh kalk saturated RODI. I went to bed thinking things were fine like normal. The next day I get a call at work from my wife telling me the skimmer is overflowing. I think maybe something is restricting the exit flow so I tell her to just unplug it until I get home. Upon getting home a few hours later I hear the hum of my ATO pump trying to pump air. I immediately realize what had happened. The entire ATO reservoir had emptied into my sump over the night and while at work due to two stuck float switches leading to 5 gallons of kalk/RODI being added to my system volume of about 55 gallons. Being about a 10% addition of kalk I new the salinity, pH, and alk/calcmust have seen some aberrant swings. Not wanting to make any mistakes by drastic fixes I decided to wait for the salinity and pH to come back down by evap. It takes about 9 days for my tank to evap 5 gallons. Initially I had two acro colonies completely RTN within the first 24 hrs. Over the next week or so I noticed a few start to STN from the base up. I decided to wait for things to settle to normal before fragging although it was hard as I watched fairly quick STN spread. When things stabilized, I began fragging and did 10% water changes (reef crystals) about every 3 days or so just for safe measure.
Present:
Now, a month later, and with over 100% water change over that time period I am stilling battling STN/RTN. The new frags I made to save what I could of my old colonies have begun to STN/RTN in many cases. All the montis, LPS, Birdsnest are fine its just acros that seem to be having issues. Even hardy as all get out corals like oregon tort, tyree pink lemonade, ORA lavender stag, and cali tort have started to experience some STN within the last week or so.

Any tips for what to do would be appreciated. Should I just frag and pray, let them be and hope, or take em out an count my losses. I am not sure what is still causing issues. Maybe I weakened all their defenses in the kalk overdose and they picked up some kind of Acro germ. For the record there are no pest such as red Bugs or AEFW.

Thanks!

 

[lakeviewink]

I have had a similar experience. The difference is that I immediately started to bring down my Ph gradually with a bit of soda water. It doesn't take much. Then I did a 20% water change to start to bring my salinity slowly back. I did 5% changes over the next few days and haven't had any problems since. I think KH is the biggest issue I was a bit worried about. I have a Tyree pink lemonade, ORA ice tort, ORA blue voodoo, ORA red planet, Tyree pink and blue prostrata, etc.

IF i could guess, I would say the thing that I would have done differently is at the beginning, waiting for the 5g evap. I understand the logic of drastic changes , making mistakes, but I would guess that you are seeing the effect now of the alk swing.

I'm very sorry to hear about your losses. those **** float switches have gotten me now 3 times. They seem to have a very short lifespan and no way of warning when they go bad. Do you have a controller? now my float is over ridden by a timer to keep it from causing this again if it sticks.
good luck with your recovery, I would start fragging but it might not help. who knows...............................

 

[Chameleon]

thanks for the advice. thankfully with kalkwasser the Alk swing wasn't too big as it precipitates out after a certain point of adding too much. The pH however had a huge shift. I am in the process of doing a diy controller to prevent such issues in the future. thanks again