Trouble Getting Alk up in established tank dosing Nitrates

[Myka]

Originally Posted by Craigdillman

The rule is I can’t raise dkh by more than 1.4 per day

Personally, I wouldn't even raise KH by 1.4 dKH in a week, let alone in a day. The longer the KH has been low, the slower you must raise it, or you will run into some very mad/dead corals.


In a situation like this, I wouldn't be adding any doses to raise the KH, I'd be increasing the doser until you're seeing a slow, steady increase, and aim to raise from the 5.3 you tested up to the 8.5 you want to be at over the course of about 2-3 weeks at the quickest. Once you get close to your target, cut the doser back so you stabilize out where you want to be. Keep in mind, as the KH dosing increases, there will be an increase in demand for Ca as well.

[Craigdillman]

Hey guys

Sorry for the delayed update been a busy month with work

First of all thanks so much everyone and specially , Greg for all the help

So update time . I took it slow and it now looks like everything is stabilized and balanced out . Works been busy so been hand dosing daily and now we are holding solid at
Alk 7.5
Calc 420
Mag 1350

So far I’m losing .75 of alk a day to the nose. Finally getting around to setting up the doser tonight and I’ll be doing the 80ml split over the course of the day and the calcium between that.

If I thought I had growth before it’s now freekin insane like since I started this thread I had to trim stuff like an inch I feel like. Coral all look amazing still and actually I feel the dinos are now like 95% gone . I am starting to get some green HA around the return pipeing and some parts of the back of rocks so I’m gonna work on dialing back the nitrates and phos a bit my nitrates slowly got up to 10ish phos still at 0.04 . ( probably what ended the dinos ) but I’m not to worried about that easy to scrape that out and stay ahead of it and I’d rather let it finish the dinos first then worry about HA long as I stay ahead of it

Thanks again for all the help. I’ll be daily testing this week till it’s all dialed in. My mag is holding strong still so keeping an eye on that

I’ll snap a shot tonight if I remember

Woooo

[gregzz4]

Great to hear things are going well.
Keep up with your N&P dosing and removing the GHA. It should eventually be outcompeted by your corals.
I had success scrubbing the affected areas of LR in-tank and blowing off weekly with sock changes.

[Craigdillman]

Hey guys

Hope the summer has been going well for everyone. I didn't know if i should start a new thread or just bump this thread from a while ago but figured this has the back story so id start here.

The last 6 months has been a whirlwind for me and my family we have had some pretty big life events come up and while the tank was on the med at the time it just wasn't my top priority for a bit.
I Probably should have came and asked for some help earlier and I'm sad( and kinda mad at myself ) I've let it get to where it is but I'm here now and i know all you guys have been amazing support and help so I'm back


So the tank was doing amazing following all the help from they post, the dinos were all but gone my parameters were levelling out with the dosing and corals were looking great. Then i think slowly there was a transition in the tank and what needed to be done that i was to busy to react to or stop and think about. As i was dosing both phos and nitrates for the dinos i think once they got under control and the tank levelled out i started to get algae again which was initially ok as i was able to manually get it out on my WC and keep ahead of it. But then it got so bad it was totally out of control and i think now i look back i really needed to dial way back the nit and phos dosing as there was a transition out of dinos to this. I was using the same tactics to rid of dinos of the reduced WC and everything which is the complete opposite treatment for the algae. I felt there was this swing from one to another and i felt i was just chasing numbers.
So I started aggressively removing and scrubbing it out and it was disheartening trying to get ahead of it. After finally realizing and stoping the nitrate and phos dosing I was still getting raised Phos and Nitrate readings and i think i was maybe removing scrubbing/killing much algae it was polluting the water as it was dying causing a cascade effect. I did a few back to back big 40g WC to suck out everything i could.
Its just been really rough going from one swing and treatment plan to another and watching the tank get worse and worse and mini crashing I'm feeling like im chasing numbers and the tank really isn't looking good. The last few weeks I've just let it be stopped messing with it. Ive lost a few sps colonies the more sensitive ones and have STN on a few of the others that isn't looking promising, corals colour look bad as to be expected, the fish still good but im sure they are stressed with all the stuff dying and the balance all out of whack. The algae seems to be at bay since stopping the nit phos but now after a bunch of those big WC the dinos are covering stuff again

Should have asked for help and direction way before this whirlwind it just wasn't in the cards at the time

So I'm looking for some direction and a good plan on what to do now, ill post my parameters.

THANKS SO MUCH for listening and the help, this community makes the tough times in this hobby possible its been a humbling year for the tank after never having issues like this before. Making this post has already mentally helped me lol


Calc- 425
Alk- 7.54
Mag-1400
Phos- 0.24
Nitrates- 15

Big 3 dialled, Phos and nitrates both super high.

dosing calc and alk daily 60ml alk 50 ml calc currently

I have most everything available to dose , foz down for p04 , vinegar, nitrates and phos just need a solid plan

thanks

[Ryan]

Craig I am having trouble with dinos in my tank suddenly as well. Was holding 25 nitrates and 0.03 on my phosphate. Suddenly phosphate tanked and dynos showed up. I'm in the fight with you my friend and am looking for phosphate to dose. Right now I have increased my feedings and started siphoning out gravel slowly to bring the nitrates down.

[Craigdillman]

Hey man , yea when I get a handle on my tank I’ll ship the advice snd protocol over to you bro.

I inially beat the dinos by pho’s and nitrate dosing till I had a reading of .06 pho’s snd like 10 nitrates . And sucking them out and they slowly went away took a while but it worked. And making sure my levels of big 3 where good

I have some of both if you need , you probably don’t need nitrate 10 is fine , all you want is some sort of reading my dinos started when my levels dropped to 0 and 0 of both

Now idk

I think my current issues are beyond that cause the .25 pho’s is way to high so I think I’m going to be doing some major wc and maybe even some phos down to slowly get my phos to reasonable levels, that’s probably hurting the corals more then the rest of it at this point

I was debating starting vinegar dosing to bring down both my levels and add a differnt bacerta culture to maybe combat the dinos and algae but honestly I don’t know anymore lol