SPS question

[Oceanic]

Are you now using the Seachem Reef Salt?

If so your ALK tests may be inacurate causing your issues. Seachem reef salt has a high borate content giving false result to true alk.

The high borate alk-portion involved with Seachem Reef Salt does not contribute to the bicarbonate & carbonate, which are the main components of alkalinity in our tanks but our alk. test kits read it as such, thus with Seachem Reef Salt, if your test result reads say 9.5 DkH the real, effective alkalinity is in the low 8's. In order to keep the DKH stable with Seachem you need to account for about 1.2-1.3 DKH to borate ALK meaning you need to keep your level about this much higher than with IO salt.

Make sense?

Originally Posted by niloc16

i have NEVER dosed iodine, maybe its something i should look into. my carbon is in a filter sock but all water through the sump is forced through it. actually i have never dosed anything aside from using rowaphos. the only thing that has changed in the last month or so is switching to seachem reef salt. ca and alk was a lot better in this salt over IO. i honestly dont know why i ever leave IO, ive never had problems with it and the 2 times i tried different salts something happens. initially i was getting really good results from the seachem but maybe in the end, this is the problem

[christyf5]

Originally Posted by niloc16

i have NEVER dosed iodine, maybe its something i should look into. my carbon is in a filter sock but all water through the sump is forced through it. actually i have never dosed anything aside from using rowaphos. the only thing that has changed in the last month or so is switching to seachem reef salt. ca and alk was a lot better in this salt over IO. i honestly dont know why i ever leave IO, ive never had problems with it and the 2 times i tried different salts something happens. initially i was getting really good results from the seachem but maybe in the end, this is the problem

Colin, I had switched to Seachem at one point. All it took was one bucket and I was back to IO. My corals weren't happy campers and I attributed this to the higher borate levels (I cant' remember specifically what it was doing to my tank though). This time I had to get Seachem as my LFS didn't have anything else and I was desperate. I just did a couple of small waterchanges with it and by the time my next waterchange they had IO in. I've been mixing the two equally until the seachem bucket is done and then I'll be back to IO. I have heard some people use seachem without problems but I'm not a fan.

[Snappy]

I also tried one bucket of sea chem and changed back to reef crystals within a few weeks as I thought the stuff was terrible. I'll never use it again. FYI, I have dosed iodine for years as well. Something else you may want to try is iron, is helps the greens stay brighter. Like Chin said and I eluded to earlier, carbon isn't very selective about what it will absorb so you need to replenish some of the elements from time to time.