Alkalinity sink
 

well after tracking the alk depleation in my tank for the last week, I have come up with a depleation rate of 1.1dkh/day (24 hour) period.

my Ca is steady at 395ppm, temp steady at 79 degrees with a 0.5 temp swing. PH is 8.0 as always.

so I guess my question is that does that amount of Alk depleation seam high and if so what is contrubiting to it?

Steve

This might provide the answer.

yup, I have seen that befor and understand that, but I am looking at a very high Alk depleation rate.. just looking for a reason for the amount not that itis depleating. I personaly am leaning to wards it being used up by the corals but I am looking for other reasons that I might have overlooked.

Steve

Steve how about other water parameters? Do you always have pH at 8.0?Acid presence from some organic matter decomposition might cause rapid depletion as well. I had similar problem in my tank in the past. A few major water changes (about 30%) over period of 10-14 days fixed the problem. Yes, calcium level was just fine during the whole time.

my PH is always between 7.8 and 8.0. as for the decomposition I think this might be a little of the problem.. I did lose a little bit of coral befor I got the chiller. so this might play a part .. as well as a couple snails that decided to cook themselves. I guess I just got to keep watching it and see what it does. I am going to be doing a 50% water change soon here when I pull out the restof the sand bed.

Steve

Let us know after your annual water change!! :razz:

Steve, do you have AC and have your windows closed most of the time? Is your abode newer and possibly air tight? If so, you probably have high CO2 levels in your house which is contributing to the depressed pH. If not, I don't know what the heck the problem is :confused:

nope, none of the above.. I in the old house I had every window open and the door right beside the tank and it is still that much.. I think it is because of the low PH of the make up water as no matter what I do it is always in that range.. also I don't feel that that PH is realy depressed. I think anywhere between 7.8 and 8.2 would be a normal range myself.

Steve

Steve whats your mag. like

Mike

um, would have to look at my book to be sure and I am stuck at work overnight but I think it was 1350ppm

Steve

hey Steve,

That is actually not a bad alk consumption at all if you have a good load on the system.

My last 150 sps system consumed almost 1.5 meq/l or dkh ( i dont remember wich units..what does salifert test in ?) a day (with a heavy coral/fish load).

I believe Jamies consumes about the same.

I noticed this originally when my bottles of co2 needed changing and the reactor was off the system for a day or two. Then during future changes i could always guage consumption.

More Alk Consumption in my opinion, just boils down to really good coral growth and/or more pollution.

Another thing i noticed, but didnt understand...is that it seemed to level out after about 2-3 days, and remain almost stable but very low alk..like 2.0, its almost like at that level, the corals possibly didnt do much growing therefore not much consumption.

Marc.

Hey Marc, I was thinking along the same line but no one else has mentioned that they noticed the same thing. Thanks for confirming my suspicions.

Steve

Steve how is your alkalinity these days? Did you perform your 50% water change yet? Did you find the cause of your rapid depletion?

nope didn't do the water change yet. going to do it when I empty the tank to remove the sand bed.

ya the cause of the dropping is the corals, growth has exploded and they are sucking the ALK up like there is no tomorrow, good thing my kalk reactor is keeping up with the Ca demands. I have a few things to get built for other people then I have to either fix my old Ca reactor of build myself a new on to control my Alk levels.

Steve

Steve,

There is an article on pH is this month's Reefkeeping Magazine:

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-09/rhf/index.htm

well at my level of 7.9 to 8.0 I am with in the acceptable range for that article, and sence my take is exploding with growth I am not concidering it much of a problem, but a good read thanks.

Steve