alk question

[rick4him]

I have a question concerning alk. I have a 34 gallon tank that I've had for about 1 1/2 year. I often check Calcium, Ma, PH, etc....I have not often checked Kh. I'm not sure why, I just never did. Everything in my tank has been doing well (as far as I'm concerned.) A few weeks ago I decided to randomly check the Alk. I have 2 test, that test for KH. You put drops in until the regent turns from blue to yellow. It normally takes about 12-13 drops to get the recent to turn blue. The instructions say to take the number of drops and multiple by ten then divide by .056 to get the dkh. When I do this my dkh is around 6.72-7.28. I notice that if I loose about "1 drop" a day. So if it is 12 today, and I do nothing, it will be 11 tomorrow. I usually do a water change every 7-10 days. When I tested the alk last time I was around 3.36. So this means that I've been loosing that much between water changes. I'm not sure if this usage has increased as of late since some of my lps/sps have grown to some pretty good sizes.

I want to be sure I'm doing the math correctly, because when I test my fresh salt water it is also at about 12-13 drops. If that is correct, and I'm supposed to be 10dkh, then that seems way off. Meaning that I have never had enough alk in my tank ever. (Since I"ve been using the same salt mix.) I'm using IO, by the way. I've seen other people who use IO say there alk is higher, so I'm not sure if they are referring to dkh when they say that, or something else. I've used several test kits, and it is always that with my new water.

I've been using the reef calculator to add about 1/2 -1 teaspoon per day to get my dkh up. However, I'm thinking I need to add more, since adding 1 teaspoon raises the dkh up about 1, and that is about how much I'm using. So my dkh isn't really raising, rather staying the same.

I'm just curious what I should do. My ca is around 410 or so, and my ma is on track. My salinity is .025. I have some super buffer and I have some Kalk that I bought. I'm curious if I should put some of one of these to my top off water. I use a Tunze ato. I have read that some people use this, but I read on the kent website that you are supposed to use some sort of special drip device if you use Kalk.

This is my first time to look into this, and want to know if it is normal to have to add 1-2 teaspoons of baking soda every day into my tank. That seems like a lot. Please let me know if my math is right, and what I need to do..?

Thanks

 

[bimmerzs]

Test kit's expire so I would stop dosing for alk until you know exactly where you are. I would get the alk checked at a lfs and go from there, normally if your ph is holding up well then the alk is within normal ranges.

Cheers,

 

[rick4him]

@bimmerzs wrote:

I have several test kits, so I'm pretty sure they are correct.

 

[Guest]

If it is a red sea test kit I would go buy an API test kit. Red sea are junk. i shoot for 9 as my alk. Alk is actually more important than ca when it comes to balancing out a reef tank


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[bimmerzs]

@rick4him wrote:

I have several test kits, so I'm pretty sure they are correct."]


If you know they are correct then I guess I'm confused as to why you are posting. Alk usage varies greatly tank to tank, when I had large sps colonies it took ~230ml of alk solution a day to maintain levels. Without dosing my alk would drop 2dkh a day so what you seeing could be normal however I would like to really stress verifying your alk results with a lfs or known good test kit before doing any major corrections. Most buy the initial test kit's when first getting started so from what you have said, it sounds like you may have 1.5yo test kit's that you are using. Also bouncing your alk by 1dkh a day is really risky as you are also bouncing your ph as well so you really want to increase no more than 0.5 dkf a day imo. Sounds like you need to verify your alk then figure out how much of the product you need to increase your alk to your target range (including daily consumption) then slowly drip that into your tank over a few day's. Once at desired level then you can drip kalk to maintain or better yet get a kalk reactor so the kalk is added with your topoff.

Cheers,