[IronChefItaly]

adam84... "How many times per day is your alk dosing? (One time at 8ml per day or 2 times at 4 ml per day) also are you testing it around the same time every day?"
I have a three channel kamoer dosing pump and the 8ml is split into three times throughout the night.

whatcaneyedo... "The tank is not even one year old and you've stocked it with many coral and inverts that will progressively utilize more calcium carbonate as they grow. I'd say that this increase is absolutely normal. When my former 120gal display was full of large colonies it would drop over 1 DKH per day if the calcium reactor was not running. Soon you may want to graduate to an automated DIY 2 part dosing system or calcium reactor yourself. Buying premixed additives and constantly measuring them out sounds expensive and tedious."
Reef fusion is a premixed two part and I am dosing it through an automated pump so it's pretty easy and reasonably priced. You do have an interesting point that brings me some comfort. At 6 ml I was compensating for 0.3 dkh of alkalinity consumption daily and at 8 ml now is only 0.4 dkh. From that perspective it seems reasonable to dismiss the sudden consumption to a spike of coral growth.

tang daddy..."Something to note, when I had higher po4 my tank used less ca and alk and as soon as my po4 dropped from .24 to .06 the corals started growing faster and alk had to be readjusted... why not use some buffer to get the alk slowly back to where you want it and then leave the 2 part to maintain it.
You can mix some sodium bicarbonate to your ato so it adds little amounts everyday to bring it back to 8.5.
If you have lower phosphate, alk at 7.5 is totally fine. I keep mine at 8.5 right now as I like corals to grow faster."
My calcium level is more or less in the right ratio to alkalinity so I'm reluctant to adjust it with sodium bicarbonate – what would be the benefit of doing it that way? I performed all my maintenance and tests yesterday and following your guys' advice I tested the alkalinity before and after. My results were 7.8 dkh before changing out 20% and 7.95 dkh a few hours afterwards which is line with what I would expect. I am continually surprised as to how difficult it is to maintain stable parameters. Each time I think I have it down, something happens and I have to correct - it's been a long process of micro improvements.

At my current rate, my alkalinity should be restored to 8.5 dkh around Friday. Do you guys think this is too quick of an adjustment? should I lengthen the adjustment another week or do anything differently? I've also noticed my pH has been falling recently, dropping to around 7.8 at night and peaking at 8.05 during the day where typically those values are around 8.15 and 7.95. Does anyone else experience patterns with their pH and the weather? or is this entirely a consequence of my lower alkalinity?