dKH low...why?

[Anonymous]

Is the test broken. I tested twice and get the same results. My corals and fish look great. I drip Kalkwasser too.

My parameters are:

pH-8.2
dKH-4
Temp-80
PO4-0
Ca-460

My stonies are growing very fast as of late, could their growth be dropping the Alk?

I added two teaspoons of baking soda to my ATO, hopefully it will raise the dKH.

Any suggestions on how to get the Alk up?

 

[Anonymous]

maybe your magnesium is out of whack.

Kalk is a "balanced" solution, so dripping that won't bring up alk in line with calcium, it'll keep raising the calcium too, until the calcium blocks out any ability for alk to get into the system.

Baking soda until you fix it.

 

[Anonymous]

Would that mean my mag is low or high?

 

[Anonymous]

why don't you test it and find out

 

[Jimmy G]

Back when I had quite a few SPS my tank used up quite a bit of Alkalinity. All my top-off is with kalkwasser (Over 2 gallons a day, dosed via Litermeter III) My Alk would still go as low as 7 dkh pretty regularly. I used Kent Superbuffer DKH to bump it up. I'd use 5 Teaspoons dissolved in some RO water once a day in my 125 until I got it up to 8 or 9 dkh. Thats what worked for me.

If you haven't used any buffer other than the kalk I wouldn't be surprised if your Alk is that low. I have seen a picture of your tank recently and you have some nice Stony growth going on. IME that uses up your ALK. The Kent Superbuffer isn't very expensive but the Baking soda should kick it up also. HTH

 

[Anonymous]

why don't you test it and find out

I do not have a test for mag yet. My LFS was out and I need to get it with my next online order.

 

[Anonymous]

Back when I had quite a few SPS my tank used up quite a bit of Alkalinity. All my top-off is with kalkwasser (Over 2 gallons a day, dosed via Litermeter III) My Alk would still go as low as 7 dkh pretty regularly. I used Kent Superbuffer DKH to bump it up. I'd use 5 Teaspoons dissolved in some RO water once a day in my 125 until I got it up to 8 or 9 dkh. Thats what worked for me.

If you haven't used any buffer other than the kalk I wouldn't be surprised if your Alk is that low. I have seen a picture of your tank recently and you have some nice Stony growth going on. IME that uses up your ALK. The Kent Superbuffer isn't very expensive but the Baking soda should kick it up also. HTH

Thanks, I am gonna use baking soda for now and I will order the Alk half of the 2 part solution.

 

[Anonymous]

Is that DKH or mql?

 

[Anonymous]

KH.

 

[Anonymous]

I thought DKH and KH were not the same ( as far as how the numbers are listed)?

 

[Anonymous]

Isn't dKH=degrees Karbonate(German for Carbonate) Hardness?

My dKH used to be at 10-11 dKH.

I added some Baking Soda to the top off water so I will check it again in two to three days and get back to everyone. I am not to stressed about it due to the fact that my pH is stable at an 8.2, so at least the low Alk is not dropping my pH.