What with my Alkalinity?!?!?

jm23

jm23

Active member
Alright so I had a mini-crash and decided to restart and do everything right with full quarantines on all fish and coral. Oddly even as I lost SPS my parameters never changed, which is weird because there were not as many corals to use up my alk, cal, and mag. So all my corals are back in the tank and my cal is 410 and mag is 1360 but I can't maintain my Alk levels. I have had to triple my dose that it was at pre-crash even though now I have less corals. My Alk is currently 7.2 and am having a hard time raising it even though I have kept upping the dose. Any thoughts? Is dry rock or new sand absorbing this Alk? Is bacteria eating it? I am out of ideas on how to raise it besides hoping that it will just take a few weeks to get everything stable.
 
maidia

maidia

Team CR
Your Cal and Mag are OK, I don't know why ALK cannot go up..
Can you try to use Baking Soda? Just my 2 cents...

My cal between 400-450 and ALK between 8-9..
 
jm23

jm23

Active member
Yeah, I never had this problem before and don't understand it. I tried a brand new red sea test kit and it gave the same reading, so the number is accurate. I am hoping it is part of having a new tank, but we will see. If anyone has experienced this please let me know what you did or how it happened. Thanks.
 
FlyinBryan

FlyinBryan

New member
What's your salinity? Have you ever thought of topping off with kalk? I've used BRS Mg/Ca/alk and it just rocks!
 
J

Jason13

New member
Reef calculator seems to think your ca and alk are perfectly balanced at those levels. I find d that my alk drops to that "balance" with ca very quick no matter what I do (within reason)

I say up your ca and see what happens. I'm not all that reef smart, but I would try it just to see.
 
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