- Location
- Greenpoint Brooklyn, NY
Wanted to get someone elses input on this. Not new to reefing or dosing but questioning my methods a little while I try to balance out my alk and cal.
Had really low Alk a few months ago, readings were around 4-5 Alk and 360 Cal. I was dosing b-ionic but it was very random, didn't have my dosers set up and I wasn't testing regularly enough.
Got dosers, set up a proper dosing schedule and in a week my Calcium went to 450 with alk being still low at 7.2-7.8. Decided to dose higher amounts of Alk to cheat/help rebalance the system but after a month of dosing high I couldn't get Alk to above 8 but Calcium was at 460-480. I stopped because I was almost at a 2:1 ratio which you don't do for B-ionic. About a month ago I started to equal dose and just increase the amount until Calcium and Alk balance themselves out as I was always told to do with B-ionic. But the past two weeks Calcium is at 520-530 while Alk is at 9-9.2 and I did a rather large increase to Cal/Alk daily amount too. Alk should be in the 11-12 range for Calcium at 465. I've been keeping mag at 1350.
I was going to drop the dosing to get Alk at 8.5 or so and wait for Calcium to "fall out" and drop back to consumed rates. But I'm also tempted to stop dosing all together and just rely on water changes for 2-3 weeks and see if it stabilizes that way, then start dosing again.
Anyways, just upgraded my tank few months before that and added in a bunch of fresh marco rocks to the system. I only had a few soft corals and maybe an acan or two, nothing really Calcium consuming so didn't test frequently and just topped off two part when I did test as the new upgraded tank normalized. Think something was just eating up my Calcium/alk fast and screwed with my system.
Noticed coral were doing not so good for a few weeks and thought it was just the new LED lights I got and they needed to acclimate. Had a couple acan heads fall out of their skeleton and checked my parameters and noticed things were really low.
Had really low Alk a few months ago, readings were around 4-5 Alk and 360 Cal. I was dosing b-ionic but it was very random, didn't have my dosers set up and I wasn't testing regularly enough.
Got dosers, set up a proper dosing schedule and in a week my Calcium went to 450 with alk being still low at 7.2-7.8. Decided to dose higher amounts of Alk to cheat/help rebalance the system but after a month of dosing high I couldn't get Alk to above 8 but Calcium was at 460-480. I stopped because I was almost at a 2:1 ratio which you don't do for B-ionic. About a month ago I started to equal dose and just increase the amount until Calcium and Alk balance themselves out as I was always told to do with B-ionic. But the past two weeks Calcium is at 520-530 while Alk is at 9-9.2 and I did a rather large increase to Cal/Alk daily amount too. Alk should be in the 11-12 range for Calcium at 465. I've been keeping mag at 1350.
I was going to drop the dosing to get Alk at 8.5 or so and wait for Calcium to "fall out" and drop back to consumed rates. But I'm also tempted to stop dosing all together and just rely on water changes for 2-3 weeks and see if it stabilizes that way, then start dosing again.
Anyways, just upgraded my tank few months before that and added in a bunch of fresh marco rocks to the system. I only had a few soft corals and maybe an acan or two, nothing really Calcium consuming so didn't test frequently and just topped off two part when I did test as the new upgraded tank normalized. Think something was just eating up my Calcium/alk fast and screwed with my system.
Noticed coral were doing not so good for a few weeks and thought it was just the new LED lights I got and they needed to acclimate. Had a couple acan heads fall out of their skeleton and checked my parameters and noticed things were really low.
