How much do you dose?

[asylumdown]

I've been having a heck of a time keeping my alk above 7 recently. I'm using what I believe is known as Randy's two part recipe - an alk solution of 1 cup per gallon of baking soda, and a calcium solution of 1 cup per gallon anhydrous calcium chloride. I recently added a 3rd dosing pump to deliver a magnesium sulphate/chloride solution as I couldn't keep mag up with water changes and occasional hand dosing anymore.

My dKH has been hovering around 6.7 for weeks now, and fell as low as 5.8 when I wasn't paying attention because of school. I thought it was my test kit but I've confirmed it with a different brand. My calcium was also stuck at 380, when I normally prefer it to be over 400. I'm presently dosing 130ml of the alk solution, and 115 ml of the calcium solution a day, and nothing is budging. It bumps up a little after a water change, then falls back down. If I didn't have 4 gallon dosing reservoirs, I'd be refilling them weekly at this point.

The corals are growing like weeds, but one of my birdsnest colonies took a beating when the alk got down below 6.

am I simply not dosing enough, or do you all think something else could be going on? 275ish display, 375ish total volume, almost exclusively SPS.