Calc/Alk Additives

[Sailorman]

My tank has been set up and running for about five months now and I have a fair number of calcium consuming inverts, so I monitor calcium and alk. pretty closely. While I find the calcium gets depleted regularly and with consistency, my alk. seems to always be at around 10 – 11 DKH and drop very, very slowly. When it gets down to 8 or so, I add some of the Alk. part of the IONIC additive and it goes up to 11-12 and begins its very slow drop.

Now I don’t want to look a gift seahorse in the mouth here, but I am wondering what’s going on. Only two possibilities come to my mind: 1) the aragonite DSB I’m using, or 2) the salt mix (tropic marin) is replenishing all that is needed. Any thoughts on this? I’m running out of storage room for the Part 1 of the B-Ionic!!

 

[Anonymous]

AFAIK different creatures consume different elements in the tank, so while the chemistry portion of the water will "fight" for a balanced state, the creatures themselves might use more calcium than alkalinity... of course I'm really only guessing here.

Finally what's your calcium like?

 

[kevindub]

I would use both parts of B-ionic or you might imbalance your tank. It could be your animals and algae are limited by what they are missing from part 2.