Testing Alan's tank....dam you lumpers!

[Canadian Man]

Just kidding on the dam part of course smile.gif

Anyway I had a visit to Aj77's tank tonight and decided to take along my test kit's.
Well I got a cringe and a little hesitation when i walked throurgh the door.

Well aparently Alan's alk came out to be 3.2meq/l and calcium was 440. I wish my setup could be at these levels.I have been fighting to bring them up to this level with much dispare. LOL!

I just might give up ro/di water on my reef after all. All you lumpers win!

[Bob I]

I am beginning to feel vindicated.

[AJ_77]

I have to side with Bob - the day I run a "Reactor" is the day I dump it all and move to the Bahamas. ;) The simpler I can keep this, the better. Remember:

It's just a HOBBY, people!!! We're not running nuclear power to a 3rd-world country here...

:D ;) tongue.gif ;) :D

[Delphinus]

Well, now now :D I want a reactor some day .... (hmmm, although, I too would like to move to the Bahamas ... why not have it both ways?? :D :D :D )

Jonathan, don't feel bad, I use tap water too and I have to manually dose to maintain decent Alk and Ca values. It's because you have a lot of stoneys. They do actively pull down the numbers. I find that I have to actively dose buffer to maintain my Alk at 3.7.

The two-part dosing can be a bit of a pain, but what I do like about it is that I can adjust one parameter over the other. I find that with the tap water, I only need to dose Ca at a fraction of what I dose for buffer. But I do have to dose Ca, even with the tap water, on my 75g, on account of the calcium-demanding inhabitants... With the Alk at 3.7 it doesn't take very long for the Ca to go from say 500ppm to 375ppm (I stopped dosing my Ca to see how long it would take, it only took about a week).

I admit to having a RO unit, but all I've used it on so far is my freshwater tank, and for myself :D

[Canadian Man]

Yes diffrent corals do suck up more stuff than others. i know.
so starting last night i am mixing my kalk with tap water, lets call it an experiment and see if it has any positive or negitive effects on my tank.

tony, the prob i have is if i raise my cal individually then my alk drops. the exact opposite happens the other way too. i suppose i have to fork out the dollars for a balanced a/b type additive to raise it.

[Tau2301]

I use a three part mix. About twice a week I use baking soda to raise my Alk, turbo calcium, and top up the tank with tap water mixed with ARGAmight. These three items are supposed to be synergestic.

Jon, you could try using the baking soda to raise your Alk. I thought I read on RC Chemistry that dosing Kalk kept Cal and Alk balanced?

[Delphinus]

Yes, that is correct. You cannot raise one too much without dropping down the other. I think of Alk as a measure of "the ability of calcium to precipitate." The higher it is, the more likely Ca will precipitate out, thus the tested value of Ca in the water column will drop.

Any of the a/b additives, tell you you cannot add them to the tank at the same time. One should be morning, the other evening. I use a little bucket to predissolve the stuff, one time I forget to completly rinse out my container between additions, so there was a little Ca residue when I mixed up the buffer. The reaction it made was pretty cool! Well, hot, actually, because it's definitely an exothermic reaction (the container felt like it was containing boiling water for a second!) It took me forever to chip out the calcium precipitate out of my little bucket.

I wouldn't use baking soda on its own for buffer. I forget the exact reasoning, but it's not complete, over long-term it will lead to ionic imbalance or something like that. What you need to do, is mix up 5 parts baking soda to one part washing soda (or something like that. You should be able to find the exact recipe on RC ... many people are doing this).

The reason people like the two part (or the a/b as you and others sometimes call it) is that you can zero in on one value and adjust that one independently, leaving the other one alone. Kalk and even Ca/Rx, you can't do it independently.

[Tau2301]

Thanks Tony, I will look for that mixture ratio on RC. By washing soda, you mean the brand name Borax? Think I remember from my childhood as a twenty-mule team - dating myself. :D

[Bob I]

I could not be more in agreement with Alan. The more I read about this dosing stuff, the less likely I am to do it. If I cannot keep stonies, then I wont have stonies. There are a lot of softies I don't have room for. Thus softies it is. :D :D

[Delphinus]

Don't get me wrong, Bob and Alan, you guys are totally correct too. Whatever feels right for you, is what you should go with.

And, I should mention, just because a person doesn't dose this or that doesn't mean they can't keep stonies. Only if you want to actively promote growing them at optimal rates, then you need to pay more attention to some of the more subtle details. I've never dosed anything in my 50g and the purple acro grows like a weed anyways. So, just because something is a stoney, doesn't mean it's a fuss-pot. smile.gif

...

Speaking of Bob and Alan -- are you guys going to make arrangements with me to get your mysis?? My wife wants the stuff out of her freezer ... ;)

[ 10 June 2002, 10:48: Message edited by: delphinus ]

[AJ_77]

Thanks Kim - we'll stay as long as the fun is goin' ON! In other words, more than 2 hours. ;)

Tony: I'd gladly take the extra bag o' mysis, but Mitch has indicated he's coming Saturday, and he is welcome to the extras. I'll be happy with my 5, unless of course Mitch DOESN'T SHOW UP! (Insert ominous music here.)

I thought you had your scheduling conflict worked out, and you and Linda were coming earler? If not, I can maybe swing by your place "on the way" to Kim's and pick up the goods.

Cheers!

[Canadian Man]

Tony,

My levels before I played around with them were 2.2meq/l and 380mg/l. I know things in my tank are doing fine but I wanted my levels at the following: 3.2meq/l and 430mg/l. I would be extremely happy if they were at this level and I assume my corals may grow faster as a result???
Who knows? :confused:

[Tau2301]

Question:

If natural seawater has Alk of 2.6meq/l and Cal of 380mg/l (not sure on this one).

Why do we need more? Is it just to speed up growth?

I don't know if I am the big a hurry...

[Bob I]

Tony if someone else wants the Mysis I ordered please sell it to him. I just cannot find the time or inclination to travel to the deep south for something that sounds difficult to handle. :eek:

[AJ_77]

"Difficult to handle?" Bob, please...

Step 1: Take frozen mysis container, remove small cube.

Step 2: Drop cube into tank.

I'll bring it back North for you this weekend, sir, if that pleases you. tongue.gif

[Delphinus]

Kim: you are exactly right. Can't beat good old NSW values. I don't know why it is generally recommended to go with "at least" NSW values (ie. implying that you can go higher) but my bet is that it does have to do with increasing growth rates. When everything in your tank is 1", I guess there could be incentive to try to get things to grow into the tank some ...

Bob: I don't find the stuff all that difficult to handle, no different to me than any other frozen food... Have you ever tried the Piscine Energetics? This is supposed to be the same, more or less.

I don't know where Mitch is ... he hasn't posted here for some time. Maybe he's on vacation?

[EmilyB]

Originally posted by Tau2301:
Question:

If natural seawater has Alk of 2.6meq/l and Cal of 380mg/l (not sure on this one).

.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Full strength seawater at 35ppt salinity has 410-450 m/l calcium, and Alk of 2.9 roughly.

I have never gone below 420Ca/Alk about 3.1 (with DI, now RO/DI), but there are many other variables to consider as well, the most important of which I would consider to be occupants, water change size/frequency and salt mix.

Just MHFO of course. smile.gif

[Canadian Man]

The reason baking soda is not good is it initially decreases you ph. in my situation it was recomended by Reefcentrals chemistry guru to use baking soda to increase my alk because i dose kalk to maintain. if you are using baking soda on a consistant basis then it will throw out the ionic balance of your tank out or something like that :rolleyes:

yes kim kalk is balanced but like tony said it works well to maintain levels but raising is not too possible with the use of it.

I did use baking soda over the past few days to raise my alk and kent sbdkh, but my calcium droped to 360.

slow and steady wins the race.

oooooo if those guys arent going to pick up their mysis gold, i will buy it :D

[AJ_77]

Hold off there, Jonny! That there's MY fish vittles!

Tony, is this Saturday OK - can you bring it to Kim's place? (Of course, I'm counting on Kim's good nature and 2 hours' freezer storage.) I'll be happy to complete our transaction at that time, if that 's OK with you. Oh, and the ballast as well, if you still have that.

Pls confirm my # of bags and total $$. Thanks. smile.gif

Alan

[Delphinus]

Actually I think baking soda all by itself is just sodium bicarbonate, and you want a few carbonate ions in there too. (Hmmm. I probably have that backwards, but, you get the idea.) It's the fact that you want both bicarbonate AND carbonate, and baking soda is only the one, and washing soda (yup, Arm & Hammer brand :D ) is the other kind. The exact recipe and the reasoning and explanations can be found on RC, even just do a search in Randy's chem forum, I beleive he has even suggested the "cheapy super buffer solution" in the past.

[Tau2301]

You'll have to stay longer than 2 hours if you want to use my special fish food freezer. There is a minimum time requirement before any and all charges are waived. :D

I have also changed my method for feeding mysis. I now defrost the little critters in a large volume of tank water. Use my turkey blaster to get under the oily layer and suck up the shrimps. Then wash the oily stuff down the sink - don't forget to run the hot water before dumping this stuff into your drain.

I decided to try this method after having to clean my protien skimmer twice in one week. I also noticed the the walls of the skimmer were quite slick with the oily stuff.

[Delphinus]

BTW Jonathan, what ARE your levels sitting at right now? Because ... I thought your tank was doing fine ... :confused: ... don't go by the numbers, go by how things are doing in the tank ... everytime I've come by and looked at your setup, I've seen growth on your stoneys. It can be hard to notice day-by-day, but when you only see things every now and again, you really notice the difference.

Alan: You ordered 5 bags, and they're $3 each. I have an extra bag for both you and Bob if you're interested, to make a grand slam total of SIX bags for $18. Mitch HAD indicated he wanted a bag or two, but he never got in touch in me to make arrangements ... first come, first served on the extra 2 bags remaining. (Mitch, if you're out there ... if you want those bags you better hurry up and get in touch with me! :D )

As for Saturday ... I suppose I could bring it then ... I still have a conflict for Saturday and am not too sure how I'm going to handle juggling the two commitments!

[Bob I]

Alan, if you could bring it North for me this weekend that would be fine, and appreciated. You could possibly pay Tony, and I would reimburse you? :D