Alkalinity consumption rate

asylumdown · #1 04-10-2015, 03:22 AM

I've been testing my alk daily, my calcium every few days and magnesium once ever 7-10ish days. More because of the time it takes to do each test than anything.

Magnesium has been steady at 3x calcium, which since calcium has been low has been in the mid 1200s for a while, I'll do some more rigorous testing this weekend and make sure they're all still in balance. I've been using part C from Tropic Marin's system as well, I suppose your'e supposed to dose an equal amount of part C as parts A and B, but even with barely dosing my magnesium doesn't change much, so I'm not sure if I'm ready to do that.

well after dosing 780mL/day of Parts A & B my dKH only fell by 0.3 in 24 hours, so I'm getting there. Just re-adjusted manually and upped the dosing rate by another 120 mL/day.

gah. I want a calcium reactor!

asylumdown · #2 04-11-2015, 03:03 AM

WOOHOO! 900mL/day is the sweet spot. dKH up 0.06, which considering the margin of error on the hanna checker and the slight variances expected measuring 10 mL of solution and 1mL of reagent without a micro-pipette, it's basically the same as yesterday.

Wretch · #3 04-11-2015, 03:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by asylumdown

WOOHOO! 900mL/day is the sweet spot. dKH up 0.06, which considering the margin of error on the hanna checker and the slight variances expected measuring 10 mL of solution and 1mL of reagent without a micro-pipette, it's basically the same as yesterday.

Damn. Is that normal for a tank that size? I think I need more coral. I only use 12ml a day.

gregzz4 · #4 04-11-2015, 03:40 AM

I wonder how many mls/day you'd be using if you were running 2-part ?

I'm currently using 100mls/day of alk in my 75g with a less than medium stocked level of SPS

asylumdown · #5 04-11-2015, 05:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wretch

Damn. Is that normal for a tank that size? I think I need more coral. I only use 12ml a day.

I don't know, I've never had to dose this much before - but I've also never had a single tank for this long, or a tank this size, or this many corals either, so I don't really have a bench mark to compare 'normal' against.

However, I have a lot of montipora from at least 4 different species. It grows incredibly fast, and the bigger it gets, the fast it grows. A few of them have super designs skeletons, so sitting here looking at it I can imagine that much calcium carbonate getting laid down all over the place bit by bit every day.