What would you do? Again with the x@#^*! Dosing

[shrimpchips]

Originally Posted by spawn

I'm using soda ash, & just checked the ph with lights out it reads 8.2 with an elos kit.

Try testing the pH at the end of lights on - at the end of lights out, the pH gets depressed because everything in your tank isn't photosynthesizing, it's respiring through the night adding more CO2 to the tank depressing the pH.

Also, I'd switch your Alk supplement to sodium bicarbonate right away and see if that makes the difference for you. I suspect it will.

[shrimpchips]

Try dosing less frequently, but more at each time to get around this double dosing that's going on.

BTW, I'm dosing over 2 ml/gallon of Ca and Alk. I think 3 ml of Mg/gal too

[spawn]

Micheal here are the pics of it. Incase they didn't come through on the email. FYI for anyone who has this it was super easy to take apart. The longest part was putting the pics to email/ canreef.

[spawn]

If I had a dollar for every time I've bumped manually & raised the maintenance dose to try & stabilize I could have paid for the doser twice already

Originally Posted by Myka

Ugh...I can't believe you're still fighting with this!

If it was my tank I would manually bump the calcium to about 400 (380 is fine), then in an hour bump the alkalinity up to 7 dKH (ish). Then increase the dosers by a couple mL. In 3 days repeat until you test one day and the numbers are still at 400 and 7, then you have the dosing amount right. Have you tried this sort of thing?

Once you have figured out the dosing amount you can manually bump up the levels to where you want them (say 420 and 8? whatever you want). You may need to manually bump up the levels once a week or so for the first month or two while the tank settles in. Plus, as the tank grows the demand will go up and you will have to bump the levels and the dosers. I was bumping my dosers up by 1-2 mL 2-3 times a month for a year, now I'm only increasing the dosers once a month or so.

[Myka]

Originally Posted by spawn

If I had a dollar for every time I've bumped manually & raised the maintenance dose to try & stabilize I could have paid for the doser twice already

How often were you testing and manually dosing?

[spawn]

Originally Posted by Myka

How often were you testing and manually dosing?

Well that's probably more like if I had $10 bucks for every time. Since august it's been weekly testing & adjusting. Because that's when the dosing stop maintaing & started to push salinity. It's been a **** show since