In need of help from experienced sps keepers!

[reefwars]

fwiw coraline is a huge consumer of cal and alk that is often overlooked , alot of reefers think they are getting no growth yet their calcium and alk is being depleted because well......it is , coraline uses as much or in some cases more than hard corals do

after a while you'll find that alk consumption doesnt happen in the evening ( or at least very little ) as much as during daylight as daylight hours ph is higher and corals and other animals are photosynthesizing

[Wretch]

Originally Posted by reefwars

testing calcium drops daily is pretty much impossible to do on hobby test kits the margin of error is to high for such a low drop , test it weekly and find out what the weekly drop is , basically if your calcium is holding steady at only 12ml but alk is rising a bit then both need to be a lower dose , try 8mls and see what happens. eventually calcium will find a happy medium with alk.


tinkering for a bit with both is ok at first but if your using an equal measurement dosing product like 2 or 3 part then youll eventually need to set both the same.


as they say dose based on alk numkbers not calcium numbers. so test alk daily for a while and calcium once or twice a week and find what both needs are

Thanks. I am letting the alk return to normal levels as it was going up with dosing then did a water change and that raised it even higher.

[reefwars]

Originally Posted by Wretch

Thanks. I am letting the alk return to normal levels as it was going up with dosing then did a water change and that raised it even higher.

yeah best to hold off water changes while you figure out your dosing levels , if you take weeks i mean yes keep your maintanance going but don't do random changes while your trying to set your doser

[Wretch]

Originally Posted by reefwars

yeah best to hold off water changes while you figure out your dosing levels , if you take weeks i mean yes keep your maintanance going but don't do random changes while your trying to set your doser

OK then if I have my dosing locked in an my numbers are calcium 450 alk 8 and mag 1350 won't my water changes with alk somewhere around 10 constantly have me too high? or am I missing something?

[reefwars]

Originally Posted by Wretch

OK then if I have my dosing locked in an my numbers are calcium 450 alk 8 and mag 1350 won't my water changes with alk somewhere around 10 constantly have me too high? or am I missing something?

right now while consumption is low yes it will , how much depends on your water volume and the size of the water change. later this may be a bonus or a bigger pita depending on the target goal

[asylumdown]

FWIW, I've recently gone through hell with alk and calcium in my tank and I had issues very similar to what you were describing several times over the year that I wasn't adding my alk and calcium supplements in a balanced way. I've only ever seen what you're seeing with acropora when there's an issue with alkalinity - either it's not stable enough, or you're not adding it in the right ratio compared to calcium.

And as Myka said, you're tank is essentially brand new. New tank syndrome is the 1 in a 1-2 punch for Acropora if everything else isn't perfect.

My recommendation -
a) Look up one of the balanced two part recipes, either Randy's two part which uses relatively cheap bulk chems, or one of the more expensive 'brand name' versions like Tropic Marin, b-ionic, etc.

b) Mix your solutions to recommended concentrations.

c) Forget what your calcium test is telling you - DO NOT deviate from dosing them in equal quantities. If your alk is rising but your calcium seems like it's stable, reduce the rate you're dosing both alk and calcium equally. There's heaps of articles online that I wish I hadn't forgot I read about this years ago, it would have saved me so much heartache. Coral, coraline, and pretty much everything that consumes calcium and bicarbonate/carbonate consumes those ions in a ratio of 1:1. This is the only ratio you should add them to your tank. Deviating from a 1:1 ratio in your dosing routine (even if it seems like your levels are "fine"), especially when your corals are already stressed out from a move and a new tank, is a recipe for disaster.
See: http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2002/11/chemistry
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-04/rhf/feature/
http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-02/rhf/

Yes over time organic acids will cause a drift in Alkalinity relative to calcium when dosing at 1:1 ratios, but according to Randy Holmes Farley, this is something you need to worry about maybe once or twice a year and can easily correct with a one time manual bump-up. Your "normal" dosing rate of the big two should be as close to 1:1 as possible.

d) start testing for ammonia several times a day if you can. Your tank is effectively brand new. "new tank syndrome" is likely the product of unstable bacterial populations. I'm personally of the opinion that carbon dosing in the early stages of a tank's cycle can prolong 'new tank syndrome' as it promotes the growth of heterotrophic bacteria - not the chemoautotrophic bacteria that only consume ammonia and nitrite (which get all their carbon from the atmosphere). Heterotrophs can facultatively use ammonia, and they reproduce several orders of magnitude faster than autotrophs, so they may compete for both space and resources. Their populations are way less stable and if you just stopped carbon dosing they're going to crash, so your tank's ammonia processing capacity might not be as 'ship-shape' as you think at this stage in the game. Even small fluctuations could be deadly for acros.

[jason604]

Thx aslyum that was very informational. So I should not just stop carbon dosing instantly but to slowly decrease to 0? As for alk n ca dosing my ratio is 1:1.

[jason604]

So things r looking better. After large water changes and a tweak in dosing I have no more damage/death to anymore sps. My alk is currently been steady at 8 for over a week now and cal at 420 since forever. After switching mag buffer from the terrible seachem to schlobster mag sulphate and chloride, I was able to bump my mag to 1250 super easy. I will slowly bump it up to 1350-1400 over the course of the week. Phosphates is now lowered to 0.04. Carbon dosing has been stopped. My sunset milli that I tried saving by fragging all ended up dying except a 1/2" frag and my red planet that rtn in the center but I did not frag seems to have totally stopped rtning looks healthy. This is very strange as from my previous experience with rtn 90% of what I frag survives and 100% of what I don't frag dies. So totally opposite of what normally happens. I bought a few more sps frags and they all look super healthy with no color loss or rtn etc... My previous sps are coloring up. Things r actually turning for the good for the first time in awhile for me.

[gobytron]

Nice work.

A load off your mind to be sure.

[crimper]

It's a very painful and expensive lesson to learn... bringing new SPS frags in a relatively new and unstable system. I hope everything works well for you now.