Water change question

Sexytang · Jan 11, 2020

I have a 1 year old heavy coral stocked 36g bowfront have been having problems with alk but havnt got test kits yet and my 1 week wc has normally kept corals mostly happy. Well last two weeks I didn’t do a wc and got my corals all mad. I did a wc Thursday night and a lot of them perked up but some still havnt. Some may be mad because I turned my white lights all the way down to mostly just blue. I changed that back a hour ago to normal. But the question is should I go ahead and do another wc to maybe boost my alk some more since maybe levels are low due to 2 weeks no wc

CasaReefer · Jan 11, 2020

Never Hurts to do a Water Change...

Billldg · Jan 11, 2020

I would like to say yes on the water change, but you really need to get some test kits to check Alk, Cal, and Mag. Those are the 3 essential parameters you need to keep an eye on with corals along with salinity and temp.

Mical · Jan 11, 2020

Sexytang said:
I have a 1 year old heavy coral stocked 36g bowfront have been having problems with alk but havnt got test kits yet and my 1 week wc has normally kept corals mostly happy. Well last two weeks I didn’t do a wc and got my corals all mad. I did a wc Thursday night and a lot of them perked up but some still havnt. Some may be mad because I turned my white lights all the way down to mostly just blue. I changed that back a hour ago to normal. But the question is should I go ahead and do another wc to maybe boost my alk some more since maybe levels are low due to 2 weeks no wc

Whoa, slow down. Think about what you've done... corals were fine w/weekly water changes, then you stopped. Add insult to injury you changed the lighting schedule. You're throwing a curve at your poor corals..

First and foremost get test kits - good ones for Alk, Cal & Mag & get a good refractometer - before you do an added water change to "up the ALK". Doing a water change to up the Alk is a blind guess - get test kits, know what you're dosing. Get everything stable before you start throwing them for a loop like lighting changes.

TracyLynn · Jan 11, 2020

How do you know or what makes you think it’s the alkalinity if you’re not testing? I would suggest testing your parameters to know for sure.
As @CasaReefer mentioned a water change never hurts.

The Aquatic Arsenal · Jan 11, 2020

You could do another water change, but without knowing what Alkalinity is at, you won't really know if you need the water change. If you are wanting to decrease/increase lighting, do it in small increments. After you make a change, give your coral at least a week and observe them to see if they are reacting well to the change.

Sexytang · Jan 11, 2020

I was getting it checked weekly for a bit at my lfs and it was extremely low was 4.4 both times but the corals where fine with it Just has noticed I never had corline algae growing and a few corals didn’t split or grow as fast as normal that’s why I checked. They recommended me to dose b ionic 2.5ml daily which caused some of my corals to really be ticked. So I stopped and did 1 ml daily still was ticked so I stopped. The corals came back mostly. I went the two weeks with no wc because I didn’t have time to go to my petstore due to it being a hr away

Sexytang · Jan 11, 2020

You can see in the picture that my frogspawn and hammer coral is ticked
I did move my anemone rock yesterday and found some hidden nems and after the move one split. Still one of two hiding on back of the rock seen in picture.