+KimP Posted March 20, 2011 Share Posted March 20, 2011 In the past few months I have added my first LPS corals and I've started regularly checking other water parameters in addition to the nitrates, salinity, etc that I've always tested for. I recently bought a test for Mg, Ca, and KH. It's the Red Sea Pro kit. These are the results I'm getting: Mg 1600+ Ca 550 Alk 8.4 (I've been adding Seachem Reef Carbonate and I can't seem to get it higher within the recommendations of the bottle) pH 8.3 I have randomly tested my Ca in the past and this is consistent with previous results, with different test kits. I have no idea how my Mg got that high. I've never dosed anything until adding the carbonate just recently. Do these results sound right? I'm trying to bring my alk up a little but even with dosing the carbonate daily, it has not risen above 8.4 dKH. Mostly I'm wondering if these water parameters look okay and if I should try to bring the alk up. I get nervous adding supplements like this to my tank when all corals look great. However, I want to make sure they stay this way I don't really understand why my alk is getting so low (it was 6 dKH a couple weeks ago) while the pH stays 8.3 and my Ca stays at 550. Any thoughts? Should I even be concerned? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jessie Posted March 20, 2011 Share Posted March 20, 2011 Test for phosphates. Very important with lps and sps growth. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timfish Posted March 20, 2011 Share Posted March 20, 2011 If your corals look good I wouldn't worry. I don't see a problem with alk at 8.4 but 6 would bother me (and I like higher than 8). Phosphates would be a good thing to check for and if you do have some I prefer the feric oxide products. I've also seen apparently happy corals with high phosphates so again judge the aggressiveness of your response by how they look. I keep meaning to get a magnesium test to look at my tanks because I am real curious about it, particularly if it might contribute to "old Tank Syndrome", but Micheal Palletta points out in his book "30 Dream Aquariums" most of those systems never monitored it, anyway I don't have answer for it. If you do a water change do you see a difference between in the alk the day after and several days later? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+KimP Posted March 20, 2011 Author Share Posted March 20, 2011 If you do a water change do you see a difference between in the alk the day after and several days later? Well, the first time I had it tested it was at the LFS and it was 6 dKH. A day or two later I do my routine 10% wc, and weekly cleaning out of the canister filter, switching out carbon, etc. I go in a couple days after that, have my water tested at the same LFS and it's up to 8.0 dKH. I was surprised and took home my own alk test and the Reef Carbonate to bring it up further. After adding a capful for a few days, it shows 8.4 and hasn't gone any higher. I should prob have it tested by the LFS again, just to compare. Oh, and with this weekend's wc, it's still at 8.4. I'm baffled mainly because my Ca and pH all stay the same . I would expect the pH and alk to go down if there were lots of organics in the water (that's my basic understanding of it anyway), or the Ca and alk to go down from the coral's use of it. But for only the alk to go down? This is all confusing I'll test it daily for this week w/o adding any of the carbonate and see what happens. And I have the LFS test my phosphates and it's always 0 or right near there. No algae problems so I don't tend to worry about it. The Red Sea Pro Mg test is great, I highly recommend checking it out. Super easy, very easy to read titration, and the gadget for doing the titration is a cinch. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timfish Posted March 20, 2011 Share Posted March 20, 2011 . . .I would expect the pH and alk to go down if there were lots of organics in the water (that's my basic understanding of it anyway), or the Ca and alk to go down from the coral's use of it. But for only the alk to go down? This is all confusing This is what I'd expect also and after 23 years I'm still confused as well . But if your corals are happy and growing I would still try to figure out why they're not more in line with each other but I wouldn't worry my corals are in danger. On a separate note, how long has your tank been running and are you doing anything to remove phosphates? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+KimP Posted March 20, 2011 Author Share Posted March 20, 2011 It's been running a little over 3 years. I don't do anything to remove phosphates besides water changes. I have a really simple setup. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timfish Posted March 20, 2011 Share Posted March 20, 2011 What are you feeding? I am really bugged by why some tanks don't have phosphates when most tanks do. The tanks I've looked at I haven't been able to determine a difference. It doesn't help when I read about a tanks like in Nilsen & Fossa's "Modern Reef Aquariums" V3 that's growing corals without PS or water changes for years with no phosphates. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+KimP Posted March 20, 2011 Author Share Posted March 20, 2011 Do phosphates have an effect on alk levels? Should I be watching phosphates more closely? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+KimP Posted March 20, 2011 Author Share Posted March 20, 2011 Yeah, having a successful reef tank without water changes doesn't make any kind of sense to me. Unless you have things dying and releasing building blocks back into the water, it seems like the water would get stripped. I feed mysis a couple times a day, and cyclopeeze once or twice a week. And I don't rinse the mysis either like I should . Luckily it all works out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+KimP Posted March 20, 2011 Author Share Posted March 20, 2011 You know, I do have some macros in the tank for the seahorses. I'm certain they use the phosphates to grow. Maybe that's why? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timfish Posted March 21, 2011 Share Posted March 21, 2011 . . . having a successful reef tank without water changes doesn't make any kind of sense to me . . . And the two tanks one is stocked with fish the owner bred and raised in the tank the other has acros reproducing by releasing planaria! Much better than I. Even if it is the macros that's pulling out the phosphates you've still got a pretty good balance to not have any phosphates after 3 years. Back to your alk issue: Has the alk dropped from what it was say 4 or 6 months ago or is a few weeks ago the first time you checked it? If it's dropped from several months ago I would be trying a different buffer to see if that had a better result. If the 6 dKH was the first time you checked it then that's the baseline, you've improved on it and I would probably keep using the product you have using a few more weeks before trying something else. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+KimP Posted March 23, 2011 Author Share Posted March 23, 2011 When it was a 6 a few weeks ago was the first time I've checked it. I took a water sample to the LFS today and guess what? My alk is 13 dKH . I had tested it with my brand new kit just hours earlier and it was still reading 8.4. So apparently my kit is bad, or I'm retarded and can't do a simple titration with a super easy kit. I was suspicious when it always read 8.4. So anyway, there's no problem after all Although now I have the problem of not trusting any of these darn test kits... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
subsea Posted March 23, 2011 Share Posted March 23, 2011 http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=112 Kim, I think that you should carry your post to The Chemistry Forumn at Reef Central. When I used a calcium reactor, I did not control with alkalinity. I controled with calcium concentration. I found that my alkalinity lagged a little but everything looked good. When I raised alkalinity, it pushed the calcium concentration too high and caused excesssive precipitation. It actually caused parts of my sand bed to cement up. When calcium, magnisium and alkalinity are raised to the high end of their concentrations a danger to precipitate out is ever present. Patrick Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timfish Posted March 23, 2011 Share Posted March 23, 2011 To quote Hydro "It's always something" And here I was going back through my books to see if I'd forgotten or overlooked something. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+KimP Posted March 23, 2011 Author Share Posted March 23, 2011 To quote Hydro "It's always something" And here I was going back through my books to see if I'd forgotten or overlooked something. Ain't that the truth! Thank you for helping me brainstorm. At least it made me really think about all this water chemistry stuff and work to understand it better - at least a little bit I'm really not going to worry about it and I'll just have it checked once in a while and hope the kit is accurate. I do better about watching the corals to know how things are going in the tank. About my Ca, Mg, and now alk levels being high, I think the only good solution to lowering them is to get a bunch of new corals Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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