Nooooooooooo. Say its not so Brad. :lol:

My experience with precipitate,

When I lived in the country, on well water and had my large tanks, I had really bad precipitate. And my sps never grew, as a matter of fact they ended up bleaching, which I blamed on my 400w Radiums.

That had to do with mixing the IO salt wrong and if you remember the problem they had with high alk. That combined with the high alk. in my well water, which I never measured until it was to late.

Also the combination I use with my IO salt now, by mixing in an app. amount of magnesium and a little calcium, prevents any precip. as well as brings the water up to proper levels.

Not sure what you can take from all that, as I believe you use a different salt but the reference to adding some magnesium perhaps??? Although your level seems fine.

I had stupid precipitation everywhere in my 225g. Tank, pumps, you name it. I have not had any since. At that house I used ro BUT not DI behind it, which would have helped my alkalinity problem.

Since adding magnesium to my salt mix for water changes, I have never had a spot of precipitate. Not to mention I also run DI to but on city water in which the alk. is not bad anyways.

Hope something in there may help. :noidea:

Doug, it's ridiculous!! My streams actually lock up every 3 months from it. I'm actually thinking of trying tap water, just to remove the RO unit out of the equation! My corals are doing well, color wise, just not actually growing much. I get some, but jeez, compared to what I used to get, it's getting silly.

Are you using a Salifert alk test kit?

Yes, my streams were bad there also. I had to clean the precip. from them on a regular basis. Esp. around that bushing. Rodger told me to run my calcium lower but I assume then it was the combination of all the mention problems.

yes, 2 different kits..

I heard some people had issues with Salifert Alk test kits.

Possibly, but 2 kits gave the same reading, and I can't see them being more than 10% off either direction, neither case would give me these (non) results in growth. However, the current alk is a bit higher than usual, just because I haven't watched it. It's typicaly been about 20% lower, Ca has generally been no higher than 400, so it too is a bit high now, but still not "out of range" for growth.

I used to get major precip, but after adding HUGE amounts of magnesium it went away.

I really don't like magnesium to get below 1380 or so, and unfortunately test kits accuracy is not that great IMO.

The whole reason I got into selling magnesium was seeing how much it would cost over the course of year at the amount of Seachem Mag I was using.

Sorry I can't help being such a noob. But it blows my mind that a sandbed can solidify to the point where you can't break it up! How long did that take to happen? You had creatures sifting while this occurred?

Brett, as best I can tell, it took a few months. I had the usual compliment of critters, but no help. I've read about this kind of thing, but never actually saw it. I couldn't believe how hard the slabs were! Sand actually bonded to the bottom of rocks and I had to chisel it off with a knife.