Baking soda = bad?

[asylumdown]

Thanks guys. I'm totally at a loss for what's happening. Two of the colonies that are dying are ones that I've had the longest and have always done well. The only other thing I can think of is that my strontium levels are really low, I just tested and there doesn't appear to be any strontium in the water. I'll try lowering the dKH over the next few days and see if that helps anything

[cwatkins]

Could a lamp be shifting it's colour spectrum?

I toasted 2 large acro's when I didn't catch my bulbs going bad.

[Willito]

Have you tested you alk with another test kit just to be sure? I find aged alk test kits will give you false readings. Do you run any phosphate removal media in conjunction with bio pellets and carbon? If you do, be cautious, this three combination will strip your water "clean" and if all changed at the same interval, it will shock sps. Finding the right balance takes a little practice, something to think about.

[asylumdown]

I don't use a phosphate product, which is why I think cyano is exploding now that I have the biopellets in there (I read somewhere that cyano does well in a low nitrate/high phosphate environment).

I am using a seachem test kit that's about 6 months old. I've been testing for total alkalinity, just did the test for borate alkalinity and discovered that my carbonate alk is actually about 7.28, so on the low side.

I also picked up a much better pH test kit, and it's also lower than I thought, around 7.8-7.9.

Spent the morning reading about water chemistry, and I think I really should have been baking my baking soda first to drive off that extra hydrogen. I think it's caused my pH to fall too low for some of my colonies, ones that I assume are more sensitive to pH (some are doing just fine). I just spent the last hour baking my baking soda and made a new batch of top off solution. Going to do a water change now and see if things improve over the next few days. Hopefully they do as the burning colony has survived all my other trial and error learning experiences, I'm kind of attached to it.