Dosing Questions

[Eb0la11]

Originally Posted by Marlin65

In my experience adding lots of baking soda will raise your PH too much.
Just add a bit at a time to get it around 8 or higher. You can bump your magnesium up a bit too 1300-1500 is good.
You want to maintain consistence as that is the most important keep things stable.

How much baking soda is "a bit" in comparison to a 200G tank? The calculator said I could add 5.4 teaspoons to raise it to 1.3 for instance but it said not to do it all at once. What do you guys suggest?

Also so it will change my pH from 8.3 to higher as in 8.5+? or what? Sorry, Im wet behind the ears... No pun intended... lol

[Eb0la11]

Ok so I just put in 2 teaspoons then for now. I'll see what people say about that and also test again tomorrow.

[Eb0la11]

Results after the Baking Soda Dosing of two teaspoons:

Ammonia - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - Very low, near 0
Salinity - Right around 1.028 (I'm going to scoop a bit of SW out and add some RODI to correct this to 1.027 since I hadn't tested it in a while)
pH - 8.3 --> between 8.1 and 8.3 (hard to read)
Calcium - < 400 --> <400
Phosphate - 0 - 0.25 --> >.25 < 0.5
Magnesium -1250 --> 1150
kH - < 110 mg/L CaCo3 --> < 120

[Eb0la11]

So today's test results were somewhat what I expected.

The only one I found funny was my magnesium reading. It dropped 100 ppm in the last 4 days. During that time I only added 2 teaspoons of baking soda to raise my kH. Is that normal?

Perhaps my corals were just dying for some magnesium.

Im going to dose a couple things today now that I kind of understand how all of this works together. I'll try to get my parameters close to in check. Then what Im going to do is leave it for a little while, maybe 3-7 days to see how the levels drop. Then I'll retop them to where I want them. Do a water change, and see how a water change effects my levels. Then I'll know how my tank is changing levels no matter what Im doing to it and then I can work on just keeping them stable by dosing my auto top off reservoir for how much I lose during day to day changes and then I can dose my fresh batches of SW everytime I change my water too.

[Eb0la11]

Ok so I've added today:

5 Teaspoons of Reef Advantage Calcium
8 Capfuls of Magnesium
3 Teaspoons of Baking Soda

Im hoping this will raise my levels to:
Calcium - >420 <440 ppm
Magnesium - 1300 ppm
kH - <130
pH - 8.3

We'll see how I do. I'll test again tomorrow.

[Eb0la11]

So after adding that dosage, my tank water is a little bit "milky".

Was that too big of a dose for a 200G system? I dosed 10 capfuls and 10 teaspoons of magnesium or calcium in its own dose. This is hardly bigger than those, but just 3 elements at once.

Good idea, bad idea? Im sure it'll clear but I just wasnt expecting that.

[xtreme]

Are you leaving some time between dosing? If you dose at the same time they will precipitate in you tank.