Uh Oh PH Spike

[civitan.erichanson]

I added Kalk a little quick tonight (2 gallons of fresh RODI 1 tsp per gallon) to my 75G. Saw some precipitate out under the actinics. Also added 2G RODI. After making some water came back to find a chunk of zoas gone gray and my zenia all sucked up into its "shafts". Doing my chemistry check Salinity 1.028 and PH jumped from 8.4 to 8.8.

 

Oh yeah and my GT anemoine is all sucked up.

 

Should I do a salt water change or pull out some salt and add RODI. I was thinking 5G of either.

 

I do not think I have any PH down.

Edited May 22, 2008 by civitan.erichanson

[YBeNormal]

If you see kalk powder settled out in the tank, go ahead and siphon that out. Otherwise, leave the tank alone and let the pH come down naturally. The pH will come down slowly and that will has less of an effect than rapid swings up and down.

[wreck]

I added Kalk a little quick tonight (2 gallons of fresh RODI 1 tsp per gallon) to my 75G. Saw some precipitate out under the actinics. Also added 2G RODI. After making some water came back to find a chunk of zoas gone gray and my zenia all sucked up into its "shafts". Doing my chemistry check Salinity 1.028 and PH jumped from 8.4 to 8.8.

 

Oh yeah and my GT anemoine is all sucked up.

 

Should I do a salt water change or pull out some salt and add RODI. I was thinking 5G of either.

 

I do not think I have any PH down.

 

Adding Kalk shouldn't raise your salinity, it must have been that high already. If you want to bring it down some just remove some tank water and replace it with straight RODI. Did you add the kalk directly to the tank or into the sump? It's best to make additions into your sump to give it a chance to dilute and to avoid getting it directly onto corals. Your Ph should drop back down some soon. If you're going to be dosing kalk in a single shot, you should try to do it shortly before your lights come on or a few hours after lights out when your Ph will be near it's low point. Before I added a kalk reactor to my tank, I used to slow drip kalk mix with an aquadoser every night. A Ph monitor is a great thing to have so you can see what your Ph is doing at a glance without having to do tests all the time.

Wreck

[lanman]

I added Kalk a little quick tonight (2 gallons of fresh RODI 1 tsp per gallon) to my 75G. Saw some precipitate out under the actinics. Also added 2G RODI. After making some water came back to find a chunk of zoas gone gray and my zenia all sucked up into its "shafts". Doing my chemistry check Salinity 1.028 and PH jumped from 8.4 to 8.8.

 

Oh yeah and my GT anemoine is all sucked up.

 

Should I do a salt water change or pull out some salt and add RODI. I was thinking 5G of either.

 

I do not think I have any PH down.

 

Just let it go... it should be fine. I've jumped up to about that level a couple of times. The last few days, with windows open and fan blowing, my pH has been running around 8.5 anyhow during the evening. I managed to get my 58-gallon tank so cloudy one night that I went into a total panic. But it settled out, and didn't cause any problems.

 

bob

[civitan.erichanson]

It was a pretty light precipitate.

 

Yes, my salinity was already high - I actually bought one of the extra GB refractometers this week and found out my salinity was 1.030. Now it is slowly coming down. Since the swing arm was sooo off I was topping off a little with SW.

 

Hmm, I do see a used PH Monitor on the board.

 

I did add the Kalk to the Sump, but the auto top off sounds like a great idea. I will do that in the future.

 

Thanks and thanks for the answer. I will leave it alone. That means I can go to bed!!

 

The zoa and xenia are coming back - the anemone just tends to be cranky, at least in my set up.

 

But the tanks looks IMHO super great.

 

Thanks,

 

Eric.

[flowerseller]

What did you use as a calibration reference on your new refractometer?