Water changes increase my alk too much. What can I do?

[Mark426]

Reef crystals and I've been doing a 5 gal water change every 2 weeks

Reef Crystals has really high ALK as you have discovered. If you want your change water to be close to your tank water....Change salts to some of the others that are noted in earlier posts. Problem solved.

I dont understand your test (17 drops). 17 drops of what? I would suggest a good test kit like Salifert.

p.s. Randy is right in his comments.

 

[wangspeed]

I'm a big fan of blue bucket Red Sea.

 

[brownsalt92]

304.3 ppm dkh

 

[CoralFreak_350]

The best advice would be to switch to a different salt to lower the alkalinity that way. I had an issue with mine being that high with the Salinity by AquaVitro and there was really no great way to bring it down besides holding off on a water change and monitoring it. After about 10 days it had dropped to a little less than 10 dkh and at this point I started making the transition to a different salt that had a much lower alkalinity. since then it has been sitting right at 8. And Im assuming the test kit you were using is an API?

 

[Damon]

As others have said, it's up to you, but switch salts.. That's the far easiest.. I have used a lot with high alk. Brightwell, Red Sea blue bucket(what I'm using now), HW marinemix, Reefers best and a few others have near nsw alk levels.. If you switched, no calculations, etc necessary..

And imho, you probably will get better growth and color with less hassle, but I'm not going to start the standard flame war against io products.. That's just my experience.. But salinity is very, very good also if you don't want to dose.. That and the red sea cp..Both excellent salts!

But contrary to what some believe, salt is not all the same and perform very, very differently..

 

[glb]

Reef Crystals has really high ALK as you have discovered. If you want your change water to be close to your tank water....Change salts to some of the others that are noted in earlier posts. Problem solved.

I dont understand your test (17 drops). 17 drops of what? I would suggest a good test kit like Salifert.

p.s. Randy is right in his comments.

I changed from reef crystals back to regular instant ocean for this reason. I'm glad I made the switch.