calcium up up and away please.
 

I am having a hard time getting the Calcium levels up to where I would like them.
My tank is a couple months old. It is 40 gallons. I have five peppermint shrimp. Some snails and hermit crabs. Two pyjama cardinal and one small ish colony of palm tree polyp.

My kh is 9.5
ph is 8.3
calcium is 350 ish a little lower at times but not lower than 300.

I have been adding two little fishies two part ionic daily at recommended doses and have been done three 10% water changes in the last week. I had done none the 10 days prior as I was away but two part was being added by house sitter.

Any suggestions?

Thank you in advance. Rick

I recommend Randy Holmes-Farley's two part recipe. You can use calcium chloride to increase calcium (more or less) independent of the alkalinity. You can use the "Reef Chemistry Calculator" (google it) to figure out how much of each part to use to reach your desired levels.

What salt are you using and how frequently are you doing water changes? Also, how much coral (and what type) do you have? Seems strange that your calc is low despite daily dosing in a fairly young tank.

For what it's worth, you're not that low and the tank is only a few months old. I'd take the slower path and see how things unfold than to stress a ton about having perfect water.

I am using seachem reef salt. My water change hasn't been consistent but I have been doing at least 10% a week and in an attempt to get the calcium up I have done three 10% water changes in the last week. I have about 40 lbs of live rock with pretty good coraline algae growth and one small colony of palm tree polyp.

why so many water changes? Normally when I do a waterchange, I dose the water. When your going by the instructions on the bottle, you must account for your entire volume with room - so remove the rocks and equipment, how much water do you have? You also need to consider the sump.

350 to some reefers is still a good number to hit by most standards. Some say you must maintain 410-450, however; some live by 350-380.

What is you magnesium at, correct or make sure mg is at the proper levels then worry about calcium, I was adding tons of mg ca and alk to my tank over the last little while and it was hard to get everything up. Be patient and you can drip calcium in daily with ro as your top off. But be sure the mg is at 1350-1400 and it should be easier.

Unless you didn't list them here, you don't have anything that requires calcium. Why do you want a higher calcium level?
What calcium test kit are you using?

This^^^^^ X1000
Your mg levels will determine how much Ca your water can hold. For my tank I found the magic number was between 1400-1450, but yours may be different.

100 percent.

My first suspect is the test kit or testing method. Lots of new water, adding Ca and nothing that uses it and it's still less than 350? I'm suspicious of that number..

When I helped a friend set up their 3rd tank last fall we had similar issues. Ca was low, alk was low Mg was low. She tried dosing all three at separate times of the day for a week. Nothing really wanted to move. I showed her the dosing calculator on BRS's site and we started just trying to get the Mg up to 1300. The dosing quantity recommended didn't raise the levels as much as I had anticipated, but we just kept with the schedule, recalculating every time we dosed. It finally came up to where we wanted it. Then we were able to slowly bring up the Ca and alk. It almost seemed to me like the rock or sand or something was absorbing the chems and until they were at equilibrium with the surrounding water, then the values started to rise.
During the whole process I spent $100's on test kits thinking the same thing. Either test kit or handling errors. Salifert, Elos, API.

I wonder with new tanks and people just starting dosing if some systems need that extra little kick start before much happens or shows up on the test kits.