Trouble Getting Alk up in established tank dosing Nitrates

[Craigdillman]

Thanks so much for all the help, I’m on the right path now

I’ll let you know how it goes

[Craigdillman]

Alright so , after a few days things starting to move in the right direction

so alk sitting at 6.3 now on the hanna and its pretty close on the red sea kit as well.

So its looking like my tank is eating approx .75-1dkh a day. I dosed the tank 125 ml of Sodium carbonate yesterday 1 hour after it was 7 on both the tests, 24 hours later its showing 6.3 now.

So my loose plan was to start alk dosing daily on the doser to dose .5dkh per day( 60ml solution) and then I can hand dose the extra 1.4 a day and just reevaluate as we go and eventually that should catch up over a week or so and i can stop hand dosing.

Mag and Calcium is holding up .

Soon as i get alk stabilized i will start calcium 2 part to match the alk dosing does that sound good ?

Edit dosing the 125 ml is raising my tank 1.1 dhk at 45 min after so im pretty sure my mix is good good call on that

[gregzz4]

OMG, I had too much time on my hands this afternoon. Happy reading !!

Good to see your mix is good
Nothing better than double-checking

I've read enough complaints about the Hanna Alk testers going out of whack when the reagent bottle gets low, so for now double-check it against your Red Sea if the dosing doesn't jive with the results. I really liked Salifert for Alk and found each old kit to be close/the same with a new one.

So that 125ml/1.1dKH tells me your system volume is 159g total. This is based on the calculator, not me knowing your volume. I originally guessed 150g (pats self on back).
Double-check this with the calculator for a couple months though as it's possible for your consumption to skew due to a number of factors including NO3 usage, and this will show up if your tank is not truly 159g, causing you to eventually either under or over-dose your system.
So if after many months the calculator still works with 159g you're good to go or need to adjust the system volume in the calculator accordingly.

Although you mentioned 60mls, run the doser @ 80ml/day to keep the Alk stable with the 1.1dKH daily usage - your current maintenance dose.
Try to spread it out throughout the day, not all at once. Bigger doses of SC significantly raises pH and you'd be better off not having that swing hugely/go above 8.4ish.

Dose the tank to that 7.0dKH you mentioned, and then turn on your doser.
Test it daily it for a few days, at the same time each day, to ensure it's holding/adjust timer as needed.

After a week or 2 of this (remember I like to go slow but you can do a few days if you like), start your daily manual dosing @ about an extra 57mls to bring it up to and keep it around 7.5dKH - double-check me with the dosing calculator !!
After a few more days of this with daily testing, bump your timer to 137mls (80 maintenance plus additional 57?) daily. This should hold you @ 7.5dKH, but keep daily testing to ensure you and I are doing the right thing. Adjust your timer accordingly.

Definitely at this point consult the calculator as I'm seeing it being suggested to add close to 200mls daily and that's just crazy. Never in 8 years with my 75g totally packed did I ever see it go over maybe 125ml daily, if memory serves, but I could be wrong. I've been known to be

After a week or 2 of this, you can start manually adding another 'X'mls daily to bring it up to about 8.0dKH. If that holds for a few days, add it to your timer. Check it every day for a week, and then you can relax and start testing weekly.

For your final dKH, don't go crazy high unless you have higher than, say, 5-10 NO3 and .06+ PO4
If lower (me 2-5 and 0.03), I'd recommend keeping it in the 7.7dKH range to allow the flesh that's consuming nutrients to keep growth up with the skeletal growth.
You'll see more color too if the flesh growth keeps up with the skeleton, and more polyp extension vs white growth tips and paler corals (talking SPS).

For Mag and Ca, I'm a bit anal so you don't need to go crazy as I do and test them daily.
You can start by testing both maybe every 2 or 3 times you test Alk.
I've read varying Ocean levels of Mag. Make sure your's stays within about 1280-1350 for now. You can play with it later if you like. Right now keep it here for Alk stability. And your Ca about 4-415. This you can also tweak later for a balanced level with your Alk.
You'll need to find your final dKH level before deciding on your Ca dosing.

Mindy once wrote about balanced levels quoting Randy Holmes-Farley;
Alk 5.6 Ca 400
Alk 7.0 Ca 410 natural seawater
Alk 8.4 Ca 420

With some math/observation I came up with this, and you can see the trend with each 0.5dKH matching up to 4ppm Ca (each 0.1dKH rise = a 1ppm rise in Ca)
Alk 7.0 Ca 410
Alk 7.5 Ca 414
Alk 8.0 Ca 417
Alk 8.5 Ca 421