ALk is really high

[Skimmerking]

Well My tank alk is at 14.2 DKH, and Doug and I have been having trouble understanding why its doing that. when I was gone away doug was looking after my tank and he tells me that the tank was at 8DKh when he was doing his water changes. I thought it would be from the IO salt having a super high level of 22DKH from the past. But Doug has been checking the water in the bucket and the tank and its not that. So I have been using pickling lime to top off on a float switch for evaporation. Its getting to the point that the kalk and the RO/DI water is getting really weak from the Pickling lime its hardy any in there.

Doug has been doing regualr water changes 5-15 gal every other week. I'm stunned on what it could be. The CAL is at 450PPM I'm waiting for my Phosban reactor to show up may be that it will lower the ALk in the tank and that will help it out. Other then that Im lost for what I should do.

[kwirky]

Maybe borrow somone else's kH test kit to verify the levels?

[DanG]

someone was saying there was a huge thread on RC about salifert having a bad batch of alk kits.

As sean mentioned, have you tried a different kit to verify the results?

[Delphinus]

I don't have the answer but jumping in here because I have the same problem with an alkalinity that's way too high. And one thing we have in common is that we're using pickling lime. However one thing that might be different is that I have both a kalk reactor and a calcium reactor online. I don't have the high alk without the kalk reactor, so I'm sort of leaning towards wondering if that's the cause. I have not tried running with just the kalk reactor to see if it's enough on it's own to have alk too high.

I should mention that I was using Salifert to test and I was wondering about the test kit, however when I used it all up I went and bought an Elos - Elos measures in dKH not meq/l, but the results were consistent (4meq/l or 12dKH in my case). So I guess in my case the test kit was fine.

[Skimmerking]

Sean, Dan, Tony ok first question Doug was using his test kits with mine solution I have another test kits coming and will see if that is it.

yes Tony I have wondered about the pickling Lime Vs Kalkwasser. and Im thinking that pickling Lime is stronger then Kalk wasser.

funny about the Salfirt test kits that iswhy I changed to them they were alot easier and better kits. Now that I'm starting to wonder...Tony I will chat with you on Msn today about the test kits

[Swags]

If you need to check the reliability of your alk test kit, here is a good check:
1.1350 grams of baking soda in 1 gallon of distilled water=10dkh

Cheers!
Phil

[Skimmerking]

Well I have stopped the Pickling lime, and converted to RO/DI top off and will be using my Sea chem Reef builder and advantage to bring the alk/cal up until i can get a better style of kalk probably from Ben