Trouble Getting Alk up in established tank dosing Nitrates
 

Hey guys,

Been a while since i posted here but looking to the reef gods you are for some much needed advise.

Im having trouble doing my tank to get my alk up. Recently I have been a slow battling dinos over last 6-8 months they are almost 98% gone now. ( long story but used 2 weeks of vibrant in my tank that didn't need it went on holidays phos and nitrates dipped to zero...pump died... dinos..)

So i have been dosing Nitrates and Phos daily now and everything is looking great. The corals and fish never had any issues through the dinos colour great and good growth: it wasn't a bad breakout just like 10-15% coverage.

My tank is a 5 yr established mixed reef ( ill put a picture up here ). Small bio load but the colonies are quite big.

So Paramaters are

alk 5.3
Mag -1410
Calc- 410
Phos 0.06
Nitrates 2-4ppm

Right now I'm dosng approx .01 ppm phos a day and .4 nitrates a day and the levels are holding steady for the last 4 ish months. I haven't been doing my normal bi weekly WC cause the dinos. down to 1 every 6 weeks

Im trying to up my Alk back to around 8.5 ish where it was before but i can't seem to do it. Im trying to start 2 part dosing here as now the tank is needing it due to the less WC but want to start at 8.5 dkh level

I did the BRS calc and used the Sodium Bicarb calc to raise it from 5.3 to 8 i split the dose into 3 days cause its quite a raise and after day 3 i am exactly the same ?!?!

Yesterday dosed Sodium carbonate that at a level to dose 1.4dkh and 24 hr later no change?


So looking for some help?

My thoughts are the tank was being limited by the bottomed out PHOS and NITRATES and is now Scarfing up any alk to grow it can. I have seen massive growth in sps last 1 months like 1" + on everything.

Im worried about raising PH dosing so much alk or is that not a big deal if i use Bicarb ? If the 1.4 calculator isn't working can i up it more? im worried

thanks for the help, ill post a picture here in the comments

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...918f5282_k.jpgjJm+5qNqSOCFT5M8J5eL5w by craig dillman, on Flickr

Your tank is consuming more alk than your dosing. There are some dosing calculators online. If your worried test daily until you have it figured out.

Your going to need to figure out 2 doses here.

#1 the dose to get your tank back up to where you want it. Then get the tank there.

#2 will be your maintenance dose. When you have your alk at whatever you want,say its 9dkh. 24 hours later, that's important it needs to be 24 hours, test again. Say you all dropped to 8. So you need to dose 1dkh of alk a day. Input that into the calculator and it will give you a dose based on the type of mix you use. I usually start at 3/4 strength and go from there. If after 2 or 3 days I dont see rise I will do full strength, 2 or 3 days later if I dont see a rise I will add 5 or 10% volume to the dose. 2 or 3 days later same thing. I am testing daily until the alk levels out and holds at the desired DKH for a few days. From there I test weekly and adjust. When trying to figure out my dose, the alk rises I do not increase my dose, I keep my dose up until it reaches my target. If it is still going up, I cut it back until it drops below my desired dkh, and go in the middle from my reduced dose to my over dose. See what happens when it levels out. Adjust from there.

Using the calculators there isnt as much playing as it sounds. As long as you calculate total system volume properly it's usually bang on. Account for rock displacement, sump, water in the pipes, reactors, skimmer, etc.

Thanks Ryan , ok gonna start slowly doing daily until the level comes up and then start the daily dosing from there. I think your right just wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing something

Just need to dose more than what’s getting used just wasn’t used to this huge outflux of alk lol

I echo as mentioned above. Slowly dose to your ideal alkalinity, then do some daily testing to find out what the consumption of alk is. From there you should be able to figure out your tanks consumption and dose accordingly for your first deal parameter.

You mention your lower on the nutrients side, so I would consider keeping alk around the 8 mark. Also depending on how much you need to dose daily, I would recommend splitting up the dosages as previously mentioned. The goal is to have as stable parameters as you can so the corals can adjust and now be shocked.

Looking forward to seeing more photos as everything levels out :smile:

So last question here

The rule is I can’t raise dkh by more than 1.4 per day, so if I add say 125ml of my alk solution and after I trst it didn’t move it I’m safe to add more the same day is that right or

Are you testing fairly soon after dosing?
With Randy's formula, you should be seeing some increase with that dose. 125ml in 150g would give just over 1dKH.

You mentioned Sodium Bicarb, then sodium carb. Which are you using?

Are you using Randy's mixing instructions, or what other instructions?

Have you used another test kit to confirm your results?

How many total gallons do you estimate you have?

I'm available to talk for a bit right now ... dinner's coming soon

I'm looking for answers to the questions I posted before I recommend any further action.

I'm out
I'll check back tomorrow afternoon

To respond to this question, I'd rather have you answer my questions before you proceed.
I'm concerned about your alk mix and dosing strength which relates to your dosing amounts, plus your Alk test kit reliability, and the validity of your Mag test.

I want to help, but don't want you overdosing your tank, so I'm waiting for your answers.

Talk tomorrow bud

Hey sorry I got a bit busy tonight , Ill respond to this now and ill check back tomorrow :) thanks for the help :) I’m in no rush, just going at this slow

So I got 125g with a sump of 75g with rocks and everything I always used approx 125 g of water total

I have all the same supplies as Randy or bulk reef

What my plan was is to dose daily 2 part with calcium chloride and sodium carbonate . BUT I was going to use sodium BIcarbonate initially to raise the dkh back to 8 before the nitrate dosing and it dropped

I ordered a Hanna and just got it in the mail today so I’m going to use it to test tomrorow 24 hours after I dosed a full 125 and see where we are at and go from there .

The calc and mag are holding up at 410 and 1380 yesterdya

Thanks for all the help :)

Right now, are you dosing 125ml Sodium Carbonate, or Sodium Bicarbonate?
Remember you need to use twice as much SB as the recommended dose of SC if you are mixing per Randy's formula.
Personally I've never dosed SB so double-check the methodology as I can't advise you there.

You mentioned at the start of your thread that you dosed then tested the next day with no change. Keep in mind that your tank may very well be using as much or more than that dose daily. I've had my total system volume of 115g use easily over 100ml daily, and you have a lot of big consumers.

If it were me, I'd check the Alk right before dosing, and then @ 30 mins and 1 hour after.
This will let you know whether the mix and the amount dosed are correct.
If you don't get the desired effect there are a couple things you can do.

One would be to test your mix. Randy states 1ml of his mix raises 1g of water by 1.4dKH.
Add 5ml of your SC mix to 1 gallon of RO (presumably 10ml SB?). This should give you a result of 7 dKH. Then add one more ml (2ml SB). This should take it up to 8.4dKH.
If you're not sufficiently close to those results, revisit your mixing instructions/methods.

Next thing would be to have your LFS test your Alk, Ca and Mag to rule out kit and testing errors. Remember that low Mag will prohibit raising Alk.

After you know for sure that you're good to go, you can then confidently start with testing 24 hours later to find your daily dKH usage.
Once you've done that for a couple days you can go ahead with the additional dose to start raising it.
Personally, and because you said you're good to go slow, I wouldn't raise it by more than 0.5dKH daily, although some state it's safe to go as much as 1.0dKH daily. I see no need to rush it.

If it were me;
Once I found the daily maintenance dose I'd use a doser and spread it out over a 24 hour period. I had mine dosing every 2 hours.
For the additional dosing you can do it manually or add it to your doser timing, but still spread it out over the whole day.

Just for clarity sake ...

I've been using Randy's recipe for years. When I wrote using a gallon of water for testing, I should have written 3785mls as I know this to mix perfectly.

And making your own SC, I place 594g of baking soda on a tinfoil-lined cookie sheet and bake it for 30 mins @ 300F.
This mixed into a total volume of 3785mls was perfect. Not adding it to 3785mls, but rather adding it to, say, 2-2.5l, then topping up to 3785mls.
If you add it to 3785mls you'll end up with a weak/diluted solution.

Thanks so much for all the help, I’m on the right path now :)

I’ll let you know how it goes

Alright so , after a few days things starting to move in the right direction

so alk sitting at 6.3 now on the hanna and its pretty close on the red sea kit as well.

So its looking like my tank is eating approx .75-1dkh a day. I dosed the tank 125 ml of Sodium carbonate yesterday 1 hour after it was 7 on both the tests, 24 hours later its showing 6.3 now.

So my loose plan was to start alk dosing daily on the doser to dose .5dkh per day( 60ml solution) and then I can hand dose the extra 1.4 a day and just reevaluate as we go and eventually that should catch up over a week or so and i can stop hand dosing.

Mag and Calcium is holding up .

Soon as i get alk stabilized i will start calcium 2 part to match the alk dosing does that sound good ?

Edit dosing the 125 ml is raising my tank 1.1 dhk at 45 min after so im pretty sure my mix is good :) good call on that

OMG, I had too much time on my hands this afternoon. Happy reading !!

Good to see your mix is good :wink:
Nothing better than double-checking

I've read enough complaints about the Hanna Alk testers going out of whack when the reagent bottle gets low, so for now double-check it against your Red Sea if the dosing doesn't jive with the results. I really liked Salifert for Alk and found each old kit to be close/the same with a new one.

So that 125ml/1.1dKH tells me your system volume is 159g total. This is based on the calculator, not me knowing your volume. I originally guessed 150g :wink: (pats self on back).
Double-check this with the calculator for a couple months though as it's possible for your consumption to skew due to a number of factors including NO3 usage, and this will show up if your tank is not truly 159g, causing you to eventually either under or over-dose your system.
So if after many months the calculator still works with 159g you're good to go or need to adjust the system volume in the calculator accordingly.

Although you mentioned 60mls, run the doser @ 80ml/day to keep the Alk stable with the 1.1dKH daily usage - your current maintenance dose.
Try to spread it out throughout the day, not all at once. Bigger doses of SC significantly raises pH and you'd be better off not having that swing hugely/go above 8.4ish.

Dose the tank to that 7.0dKH you mentioned, and then turn on your doser.
Test it daily it for a few days, at the same time each day, to ensure it's holding/adjust timer as needed.

After a week or 2 of this (remember I like to go slow but you can do a few days if you like), start your daily manual dosing @ about an extra 57mls to bring it up to and keep it around 7.5dKH - double-check me with the dosing calculator !!
After a few more days of this with daily testing, bump your timer to 137mls (80 maintenance plus additional 57?) daily. This should hold you @ 7.5dKH, but keep daily testing to ensure you and I are doing the right thing. Adjust your timer accordingly.

Definitely at this point consult the calculator as I'm seeing it being suggested to add close to 200mls daily and that's just crazy. Never in 8 years with my 75g totally packed did I ever see it go over maybe 125ml daily, if memory serves, but I could be wrong. I've been known to be :razz:

After a week or 2 of this, you can start manually adding another 'X'mls daily to bring it up to about 8.0dKH. If that holds for a few days, add it to your timer. Check it every day for a week, and then you can relax and start testing weekly.

For your final dKH, don't go crazy high unless you have higher than, say, 5-10 NO3 and .06+ PO4
If lower (me 2-5 and 0.03), I'd recommend keeping it in the 7.7dKH range to allow the flesh that's consuming nutrients to keep growth up with the skeletal growth.
You'll see more color too if the flesh growth keeps up with the skeleton, and more polyp extension vs white growth tips and paler corals (talking SPS).

For Mag and Ca, I'm a bit anal so you don't need to go crazy as I do and test them daily.
You can start by testing both maybe every 2 or 3 times you test Alk.
I've read varying Ocean levels of Mag. Make sure your's stays within about 1280-1350 for now. You can play with it later if you like. Right now keep it here for Alk stability. And your Ca about 4-415. This you can also tweak later for a balanced level with your Alk.
You'll need to find your final dKH level before deciding on your Ca dosing.

Mindy once wrote about balanced levels quoting Randy Holmes-Farley;
Alk 5.6 Ca 400
Alk 7.0 Ca 410 natural seawater
Alk 8.4 Ca 420

With some math/observation I came up with this, and you can see the trend with each 0.5dKH matching up to 4ppm Ca (each 0.1dKH rise = a 1ppm rise in Ca)
Alk 7.0 Ca 410
Alk 7.5 Ca 414
Alk 8.0 Ca 417
Alk 8.5 Ca 421

Personally, I wouldn't even raise KH by 1.4 dKH in a week, let alone in a day. The longer the KH has been low, the slower you must raise it, or you will run into some very mad/dead corals.


In a situation like this, I wouldn't be adding any doses to raise the KH, I'd be increasing the doser until you're seeing a slow, steady increase, and aim to raise from the 5.3 you tested up to the 8.5 you want to be at over the course of about 2-3 weeks at the quickest. Once you get close to your target, cut the doser back so you stabilize out where you want to be. Keep in mind, as the KH dosing increases, there will be an increase in demand for Ca as well.

Hey guys

Sorry for the delayed update been a busy month with work

First of all thanks so much everyone and specially , Greg for all the help

So update time . I took it slow and it now looks like everything is stabilized and balanced out . Works been busy so been hand dosing daily and now we are holding solid at
Alk 7.5
Calc 420
Mag 1350

So far I’m losing .75 of alk a day to the nose. Finally getting around to setting up the doser tonight and I’ll be doing the 80ml split over the course of the day and the calcium between that.

If I thought I had growth before it’s now freekin insane like since I started this thread I had to trim stuff like an inch I feel like. Coral all look amazing still and actually I feel the dinos are now like 95% gone . I am starting to get some green HA around the return pipeing and some parts of the back of rocks so I’m gonna work on dialing back the nitrates and phos a bit my nitrates slowly got up to 10ish phos still at 0.04 . ( probably what ended the dinos ) but I’m not to worried about that easy to scrape that out and stay ahead of it and I’d rather let it finish the dinos first then worry about HA long as I stay ahead of it

Thanks again for all the help. I’ll be daily testing this week till it’s all dialed in. My mag is holding strong still so keeping an eye on that

I’ll snap a shot tonight if I remember

Woooo

Great to hear things are going well.
Keep up with your N&P dosing and removing the GHA. It should eventually be outcompeted by your corals.
I had success scrubbing the affected areas of LR in-tank and blowing off weekly with sock changes.

Hey guys

Hope the summer has been going well for everyone. I didn't know if i should start a new thread or just bump this thread from a while ago but figured this has the back story so id start here.

The last 6 months has been a whirlwind for me and my family we have had some pretty big life events come up and while the tank was on the med at the time it just wasn't my top priority for a bit.
I Probably should have came and asked for some help earlier and I'm sad( and kinda mad at myself ) I've let it get to where it is but I'm here now and i know all you guys have been amazing support and help so I'm back :)


So the tank was doing amazing following all the help from they post, the dinos were all but gone my parameters were levelling out with the dosing and corals were looking great. Then i think slowly there was a transition in the tank and what needed to be done that i was to busy to react to or stop and think about. As i was dosing both phos and nitrates for the dinos i think once they got under control and the tank levelled out i started to get algae again which was initially ok as i was able to manually get it out on my WC and keep ahead of it. But then it got so bad it was totally out of control and i think now i look back i really needed to dial way back the nit and phos dosing as there was a transition out of dinos to this. I was using the same tactics to rid of dinos of the reduced WC and everything which is the complete opposite treatment for the algae. I felt there was this swing from one to another and i felt i was just chasing numbers.
So I started aggressively removing and scrubbing it out and it was disheartening trying to get ahead of it. After finally realizing and stoping the nitrate and phos dosing I was still getting raised Phos and Nitrate readings and i think i was maybe removing scrubbing/killing much algae it was polluting the water as it was dying causing a cascade effect. I did a few back to back big 40g WC to suck out everything i could.
Its just been really rough going from one swing and treatment plan to another and watching the tank get worse and worse and mini crashing I'm feeling like im chasing numbers and the tank really isn't looking good. The last few weeks I've just let it be stopped messing with it. Ive lost a few sps colonies the more sensitive ones and have STN on a few of the others that isn't looking promising, corals colour look bad as to be expected, the fish still good but im sure they are stressed with all the stuff dying and the balance all out of whack. The algae seems to be at bay since stopping the nit phos but now after a bunch of those big WC the dinos are covering stuff again

Should have asked for help and direction way before this whirlwind it just wasn't in the cards at the time

So I'm looking for some direction and a good plan on what to do now, ill post my parameters.

THANKS SO MUCH for listening and the help, this community makes the tough times in this hobby possible its been a humbling year for the tank after never having issues like this before. Making this post has already mentally helped me lol


Calc- 425
Alk- 7.54
Mag-1400
Phos- 0.24
Nitrates- 15

Big 3 dialled, Phos and nitrates both super high.

dosing calc and alk daily 60ml alk 50 ml calc currently

I have most everything available to dose , foz down for p04 , vinegar, nitrates and phos just need a solid plan

thanks

Craig I am having trouble with dinos in my tank suddenly as well. Was holding 25 nitrates and 0.03 on my phosphate. Suddenly phosphate tanked and dynos showed up. I'm in the fight with you my friend and am looking for phosphate to dose. Right now I have increased my feedings and started siphoning out gravel slowly to bring the nitrates down.

Hey man , yea when I get a handle on my tank I’ll ship the advice snd protocol over to you bro.

I inially beat the dinos by pho’s and nitrate dosing till I had a reading of .06 pho’s snd like 10 nitrates . And sucking them out and they slowly went away took a while but it worked. And making sure my levels of big 3 where good

I have some of both if you need , you probably don’t need nitrate 10 is fine , all you want is some sort of reading my dinos started when my levels dropped to 0 and 0 of both

Now idk

I think my current issues are beyond that cause the .25 pho’s is way to high so I think I’m going to be doing some major wc and maybe even some phos down to slowly get my phos to reasonable levels, that’s probably hurting the corals more then the rest of it at this point

I was debating starting vinegar dosing to bring down both my levels and add a differnt bacerta culture to maybe combat the dinos and algae but honestly I don’t know anymore lol