still having calcium problems ***FIXED***
 

Ok, bought a salifert Mag test kit. Mag was at 700ppm. Got it up up to 1400ppm. Now even with dosing kent turbo at 2x reccommended, my calcium will not go over 250ppm. Alk is @ 10.9dKh and stable. Ph is at 8.25( pinpoint) Sg is at 1.026. Been dosing smokinreefs calcium hydroxide. The IO salt when mixed and circulated for 12hrs the readings are cal. 320ppm, mag 800ppm alk. 10 dKh. HELP. suggestions please. :biggrin:

How are your corals doing?

They are doing fine. One of the monti dig's it finally starting to incrust the rock it is on. Growth is better than it use to be but I attribute that to the lighting upgrade. Lots of coraline algae.

FWIW my 90gal setup with monti cap, monti digi, several lps pieces, small acro and small millepora required 2 tsp/day of turbo calcium in addition to 3/4 gal saturated limewater to maintain ~400ppm Ca. That is ~4X the 'high load' recomendations on the container.

Re: still having calcium problems
 

[quote="martym"]Ok, bought a salifert Mag test kit. Mag was at 700ppm. Got it up up to 1400ppm. Now even with dosing kent turbo at 2x reccommended, my calcium will not go over 250ppm.

I find that when I dose with Turbo Calcium I need to add a lot more than the "maximum" that Kent suggests. I know that there are others that can confirm that.

Didn't I email you a link with a calculator for how many teaspoons of calcium chloride you would need to hit a certain target. If you use that, you'll see you need a lot more than what Kent recommends.

Good luck,

Bill

Re: still having calcium problems
 

are you talking about the 1 tsp daily type recomendation on the jar? after you fixed your Mg did you bring your Ca back to normal using a 1 or two time large addition of turbo Ca or simular product or did you just start dosing by the recomendation on the bottle?

Steve

I started by using reccommened dose. The calculator says to use 38.5 tsp of turbo calcium. :eek: Seems pretty drastic to me. Maybe I'll try 5tps to start.

:eek:

Hi Marty,

Are you sure of the accuracy of your Calcium test kit? Even a normal water change using IO salt should keep your Ca at a higher level than 250.

That's what I said Christy :smile:
I get the same readings from Salifert and Hagen. My Bucket of IO measures 320ppm calcium when mixed over night. Going to try Crystal sea next time. I talked to Robert @ Crystal sea and he said you can change your salts but do so slowly. I going to try smaller more frequent changes if I like the readings, probably 5 gallons /week instead of 10 every 2 weeks. Not very impressed with IO's readings.