[sphelps]

I met another reefer the other night and I was taking a look at his tank and talking about some of the routine maintenance he performs and I was blown away to discover he has to clean his return pump and skimmer pump every 2 weeks or they will physically stop working due to lime build up. It’s become such a routine that he has two spare pumps which he switches out every two weeks. The pumps are MAG 1800, his tank volume is about 160 gallons and it’s moderately stocked with about a dozen smaller SPS colonies, 3 clams at 4” and maybe half a dozen larger LPS corals. I wouldn’t consider it a high demand tank but he claims he needs to dose 400mL/day of Calcium and 800mL/day of Alk supplement just to keep his calcium at about 420 and Alk at about 8.2. He’s using Randy’s recipe #1 and he also doses Kalk through his top off.

It seems obvious he’s overdosing a ton but his PH sits at 8.2 and he claims he’s verified his test readings multiple times with different tests kits including Salifert, Seachem and Hanna. The recommended dosage for his tank should be in the range of 80mL/day but he’s dosing 5 to 10 times that plus the Kalk.

I thought it was a bit of an interesting case so I’m opening it up for discussion. All his corals look fairly healthy, SPS are a little washed out but he’s using a lot of carbon and GFO. He also skims very wet and consistently changes water weekly at a rate of about 5%, uses H2Ocean salt and RO/DI.