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Thinking about carbon dosing...


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Thanks Tony that is what I was wondering.

 

I thought about it for a min and the only thing that I have changed recently since stuff started to rtn is I did two water changes. I checked my tds and its 28. Now I have had BAD luck with tds meters and I am not sure that tds would make stuff rtn either. So I am thinking about using my other to setup and testing its water, if its good I might do a large waterchange if I can't figure anything else out.

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Paul, TDS indicates the presence of ions. It could be calcium, phosphate, ammonium, just about anything. A TDS of 28 is high if this is what's directly coming out of your RO/DI unit (not the stuff stored in your reservoir because sometimes you can get a bacterial film that will raise the TDS of stored RO/DI). If you get distilled water at the the grocery, the TDS should be zero. You can use this as a way of verifying that your TDS meter is at least reading 0 TDS reasonably well. Before doing a large water change, you should make sure that the source water is of a high quality.

 

If it helps, here are the "big 3" parameters in my tank (typically):

 

Alk 10 dKH

Ca 430 ppm

Mg 1250-1350 ppm

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I am hoping the tds is what's been causing this. I think the last time something bad happened was because my ro filter wasn't working well so maybe I am onto it. I am most certainly going to make sure the water is rigt before I do any waterchanges.

 

If there is someone in manassas that has a hand held tds meter that I could use to verify how well mine is working please pm me.

 

Does anyone ever calibrate their tds meters?

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I don't calibrate mine but I have several of them.

 

How about Johnny? Doesn't he have one over at BRK? Can't you take a sample there?

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Oh, and you can always check it against distilled water. It should read zero in the distilled that you get from the grocery. (At least, mine always have.)

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Distilled water reads 8 tds. Should I calibrate the meter to the water or use my tds calibration solution. I always was told its better to calibrate near the number your measuring.

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I'd assume that 8 tds on your meter is actually zero.

 

I wonder if changing the battery out on the meter would help?

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I don't think it's the batteries. I took it to my other setup and the tds was 4 with dirty filters and no di. So I am going to take it to my house and put fresh di in there for a waterchange and to use for top off. I am just hoping the big waterchange doesn't raise the alk to the point where "if" the alk was causing the random Stn it would just make it worse.

 

If your sure that distilled water all has zero tds my meter was reading high and my tds was really not that high. In my experience higher tds never caused rtn like this. But who knows with all the junky ro equipment and tds meters I have used. I am confused and tired... I just want to get a nice filter setup with a reliable inline tds meter.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I found a guy on RC that had the exact same symptoms in his tank that he was vinegar dosing. He had the same color change to green on the corals that started to rtn. So I cut my dose back almost halfway. I don't think the somewhat high tds had anything to do with the coral death. I did an 80 gallon waterchange, and didn't see any noticeable differences. The corals are still basically idle and not consuming calcium or alk, so hopefully I will start to see improvements in polyp extension and coral health soon.

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