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Old 04-18-2015, 08:39 PM
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FWIW, I've recently gone through hell with alk and calcium in my tank and I had issues very similar to what you were describing several times over the year that I wasn't adding my alk and calcium supplements in a balanced way. I've only ever seen what you're seeing with acropora when there's an issue with alkalinity - either it's not stable enough, or you're not adding it in the right ratio compared to calcium.

And as Myka said, you're tank is essentially brand new. New tank syndrome is the 1 in a 1-2 punch for Acropora if everything else isn't perfect.

My recommendation -
a) Look up one of the balanced two part recipes, either Randy's two part which uses relatively cheap bulk chems, or one of the more expensive 'brand name' versions like Tropic Marin, b-ionic, etc.

b) Mix your solutions to recommended concentrations.

c) Forget what your calcium test is telling you - DO NOT deviate from dosing them in equal quantities. If your alk is rising but your calcium seems like it's stable, reduce the rate you're dosing both alk and calcium equally. There's heaps of articles online that I wish I hadn't forgot I read about this years ago, it would have saved me so much heartache. Coral, coraline, and pretty much everything that consumes calcium and bicarbonate/carbonate consumes those ions in a ratio of 1:1. This is the only ratio you should add them to your tank. Deviating from a 1:1 ratio in your dosing routine (even if it seems like your levels are "fine"), especially when your corals are already stressed out from a move and a new tank, is a recipe for disaster.
See: http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2002/11/chemistry
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-04/rhf/feature/
http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-02/rhf/

Yes over time organic acids will cause a drift in Alkalinity relative to calcium when dosing at 1:1 ratios, but according to Randy Holmes Farley, this is something you need to worry about maybe once or twice a year and can easily correct with a one time manual bump-up. Your "normal" dosing rate of the big two should be as close to 1:1 as possible.

d) start testing for ammonia several times a day if you can. Your tank is effectively brand new. "new tank syndrome" is likely the product of unstable bacterial populations. I'm personally of the opinion that carbon dosing in the early stages of a tank's cycle can prolong 'new tank syndrome' as it promotes the growth of heterotrophic bacteria - not the chemoautotrophic bacteria that only consume ammonia and nitrite (which get all their carbon from the atmosphere). Heterotrophs can facultatively use ammonia, and they reproduce several orders of magnitude faster than autotrophs, so they may compete for both space and resources. Their populations are way less stable and if you just stopped carbon dosing they're going to crash, so your tank's ammonia processing capacity might not be as 'ship-shape' as you think at this stage in the game. Even small fluctuations could be deadly for acros.
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