Opinions on my water chemistry

[howaboutme]

If your consumption is that much from that cap, I wonder how mine isn't higher? I guess volume vs. corals?

 

I saw that post in your thread...I doubt my monti cap is the one causing the consumption but I can't imagine the amount of sps in my tank is even proportionally close to yours. I mean, your monti (the mother.. ) is huge too!

 

consumption should be independent of total tank volume. It would just depend on "coral density" or something. You 7 dKh is the same carbonate ions per liter in your tank as it is in Copps' new 1500 gallon SPS tank. If the two of you had the same proportional amount of hard coral in there, you'd both use the same amount of alk per day, other things being equal.

 

I guess I'm also saying 0.8 in your teeny tank is much less in absolute numbers than 0.8 in a bigger tank.

 

Thanks, Alan..hard to imagine that my tank actually has a lot of sps...I think I can count the # on both hands...Actually..just counted. I have 12..or 11 not including another acro that the nem beat up that's probably dead. I think I still have obvious room for another 3, 4 or 5 w/o altering anything.

[AlanM]

I think you went over with me what could be using alk in my tank that wasn't coral. Didn't you say that the tank could still be cycling and I might be exporting it through the skimmer or was that someone else?

[howaboutme]

I think you went over with me what could be using alk in my tank that wasn't coral. Didn't you say that the tank could still be cycling and I might be exporting it through the skimmer or was that someone else?

Yeah, I think that was me but I can't, for the life of me, think of where I learned that... Haha..

[taiscici]

Kinda weird where your Alk went down so much and Cal is still high. From my understanding alk and cal usually move together unless you have a partial nitrogen cycle. Based on the following article.

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2002/11/chemistry

 

"The vast majority of alkalinity depletion in most tanks also comes about by the precipitation of calcium carbonate, as described above. In this process, as alkalinity is depleted by 1 meq/L, calcium will be depleted by 20 ppm. There are some other processes that can lead to alkalinity depletion, including partial cycling of nitrogen (from organic compounds to nitrate and no further) and the incorporation of magnesium into calcium carbonate, but these are generally much less important than calcification."

[YHSublime]

Jack, you are running a skimmer now?

[howaboutme]

Kinda weird where your Alk went down so much and Cal is still high. From my understanding alk and cal usually move together unless you have a partial nitrogen cycle. Based on the following article.

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2002/11/chemistry

 

"The vast majority of alkalinity depletion in most tanks also comes about by the precipitation of calcium carbonate, as described above. In this process, as alkalinity is depleted by 1 meq/L, calcium will be depleted by 20 ppm. There are some other processes that can lead to alkalinity depletion, including partial cycling of nitrogen (from organic compounds to nitrate and no further) and the incorporation of magnesium into calcium carbonate, but these are generally much less important than calcification."

 

Yes, I am zone 4 in that article and am still perplexed how my Alk could be so low while my Ca so high. The only nitrogen cycle related intervention I have done in the recent past is dosed KNO3 to raise my NO3. I was running 0 NO3 for a long time and decided to get my NO3 up so that my PO4 can be lowered (redfield ratio). I have since stopped dosing nitrate since my tank is pretty balanced out and can maintain some level of NO3 by itself. Could that be it? I will do some further research. Thanks for quoting that.

 

Jack, you are running a skimmer now?

 

Yes, I have the CPR bak pak HOB running still. Why? You thought that I somehow put my CS1 on this teeny tiny tank?

[taiscici]

The thing with dosing kno3 is you also raising potassium. I'm not sure what effect of high potassium to alk.

[howaboutme]

The thing with dosing kno3 is you also raising potassium. I'm not sure what effect of high potassium to alk.

My understanding is that the effect of K is negligible when dosing for no3. If K becomes an issue during this process, the tank is already in trouble from no3. But, I will admit that I didn't test for K at all so I don't know. I will do some more research. Thanks!

[howaboutme]

Did some quick research regarding the nitrogen cycle and alk depletion.

 

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-12/rhf/index.htm

 

At about the middle of the article:

 

There are, however, circumstances where the alkalinity is lost in the conversion of ammonia to nitrate, and is never returned. The most likely scenario to be important in reef aquaria is when nitrate is removed through water changes. In that case, each water change takes out some nitrate, and if the system produces nitrate to get back to some stable level, the alkalinity again becomes depleted.

 

I wonder if my dosing nitrate further enhanced this theory.....Thanks Chau for asking the question. It's something to think about.

[howaboutme]

Hello again.

 

Tonight's alk is 5.9 dkh. I've lost 1.1 dkh over 2 days. I dosed enough to add ~ 1 dkh to bring it up to 7. I plan on continuing to dose the next couple of day until I reach 8 and then see my consumption over a couple of days. I am just wonder if consumption changes depending on the baseline alk value? Hmmm... I do agree w/ Jenn that it's nice to have a buffer and so I'm continuing the climb up the ladder.

[taiscici]

That sound like a good plan Jack. If I were you I would measure calcium and nitrate also.

[Origami]

Just checking in. Remember, depletion of 0.7 dKH only results in a 5 ppm drop on calcium under ideal conditions. You'll be hard pressed to find a hobbyist calcium test kit with that kind of accuracy and precision.

 

An incomplete nitrogen cycle can asymmetrically deplete alkalinity, but I don't think that's what you're seeing.

 

Sounds like you're making progress.

 

Sent from my ADR6425LVW using Tapatalk

 

 

[howaboutme]

Thanks guys! I will be periodically checking Ca as well. I also check NO3 every so often but that's pretty stable now that the tank has matured. I just ordered more reagents. Those things don't last very long and they stain!

Edited April 22, 2014 by howaboutme

[howaboutme]

Tonight's numbers:

 

Alk: 7.8 dkh

Ca: 480

 

For the past 2 days, I have tried to reach 8 dkh but I'm not quite there. I need another day or two of dosing at ~ 1 dkh per dose/day minus consumption. My Ca seems stable.

 

I have decided for maintenance dosing to do it by hand, for now. That said, I think it makes sense to do Randy's recipe so I can make a large batch at one time and then just add whatever is needed each day w/ a syringe or something. I'm wondering if I need to even worry about Ca. It seems that my Ca can keep up with just water changes (theory comes from the fact that my Ca was high but my Alk was low when I started this whole process so I think the Ca kept up w/ just water changes while the Alk not so much) but I will try to monitor that a bit more now.

 

Edit..found out I have a bunch of cute baby snails in the tank tonight. Now I realize that when I scrape the glass, I think I'm killing some snail eggs that I thought were just calciferous growth. Anyhow, a bunch survived. It's cute to see 2  little tiny tentacles. My daughter got a kick out of it. She's Dashy from Octonauts.

Edited April 24, 2014 by howaboutme

[Origami]

Jack, your calcium is high enough that I would just let it ride. Don't dose until you see that you need to do so. That goes for anything, of course.

[howaboutme]

Jack, your calcium is high enough that I would just let it ride. Don't dose until you see that you need to do so. That goes for anything, of course.

 

Thanks Tom!

[howaboutme]

Tonight's numbers:

 

Pre-dose-

Alk: 7.4 dkh

 

It seems like my consumption was only 0.4 dkh in the last 24 hrs. That's different from previous, one was 0.8 dkh. Is this pretty normal in that consumption is not the same each day?

 

After dose of alk:

Alk:8.2 dkh

Ca: ~480 (did not check pre-dose, does it matter?)

 

Question...When you measure consumption, how many days do you measure? Is it over the course of a few days or even a week? During that time, you do NOT dose, right? If you measure for that long w/o dosing, wouldn't you just end up at a point like me where you have to catch up a lot? Or is that the point in order to get an accurate measurement of consumption? I'm trying to determine my maintenance dose so I don't have to test each time.

 

Thanks.

[lnevo]

You want a weeks worth of measurement to compensate for fluctuations like that and standard deviation. You could easily cut that down to 3-4 days. What i did was drop the current dose by what your trying to increase and see what your target maintenance dose might be. If it drops from where you want , add a bit more to next days dose. Then you can let it drop for a few days measure again, set your dosers for your dosage or keep hand dosing. Dose a bit extra to get back to your target level which is what you just did. Basically just tuning it a few times to get it just right.

Edited April 25, 2014 by lnevo

[howaboutme]

Okay, I get it. So I will start from the 8.2 from tonight's dose and monitor the tank the next few days. Then I average the total lose out to determine my maintenance dose. From there, I will dose a larger amount like what I've been doing over a few days to get back at the baseline then start the maintenance dosing. Thanks!

[howaboutme]

Another question..I'm wondering if I should do recipe #1 from Randy's DIY....Reason being is because my tank runs at a lower ph. I hate to start worrying about ph too but I know using recipe #2 (which is what I am doing now essentially) lowers the ph temporarily. My graph from the last 30 days. As you can see, I don't hit too much above 8.0 and spend a lot of time at around 7.7 to 7.8 ish.

 

 

Thoughts?

[lnevo]

Whichever one is soda ash is the one I'm using because thats what BRS gives in the prepackaged packets. Once your dosing electronically the ph change is spread out and not as dramatic and doesnt past as long because of smaller doses, so in the end it doesn't really matter. Unless you do alk at night and ca during the day or something to try and right your ph. But in reality its not going to change the overall ph and you shouldnt try to control your ph by dosing but in your case it doesnt hurt to switch to soda ash.

[YHSublime]

Jack, I would look into either BRS dosing pumps, or a bubble magnus, or something of the like. I test every few days, and it's mostly set and forget. It only took a week of testing, averaging, and finding my sweet spot. Seeing great polyp extension, and some of my acros are starting to color up (could just be time, as I got them from the meet browned...) either way, I've not been able to look at my tank for the past 3 days or so, and it's been nice having things auto. Plus it's one of those things you could use when you upgrade down the road, like your skimmer

[lnevo]

Go with the BRS pumps. With the reef angel I can set you up with calibration and volume based dosing rather than having to convert to seconds every time you want to make an adjustment

[howaboutme]

Whichever one is soda ash is the one I'm using because thats what BRS gives in the prepackaged packets. Once your dosing electronically the ph change is spread out and not as dramatic and doesnt past as long because of smaller doses, so in the end it doesn't really matter. Unless you do alk at night and ca during the day or something to try and right your ph. But in reality its not going to change the overall ph and you shouldnt try to control your ph by dosing but in your case it doesnt hurt to switch to soda ash.

 

Yeah, recipe #1 is soda ash. It adds the extra step of baking the baking soda. I'd prefer to not do that step because of my lack of time and general laziness.. Couple that w/ me being cheap, you've got a...conundrum, right Isaac?

 

Jack, I would look into either BRS dosing pumps, or a bubble magnus, or something of the like. I test every few days, and it's mostly set and forget. It only took a week of testing, averaging, and finding my sweet spot. Seeing great polyp extension, and some of my acros are starting to color up (could just be time, as I got them from the meet browned...) either way, I've not been able to look at my tank for the past 3 days or so, and it's been nice having things auto. Plus it's one of those things you could use when you upgrade down the road, like your skimmer

 

I am looking into automated dosing but I'm not going to decide that soon and will probably do hand dosing for a little while. Part of my hesitation is the lack of a sump so it's another tube over the back of my DT. I can conceal it well but still....Not sure when my next set up will be (I did leak test the tank I got from Dave and it's good) so this is all part of the equation. I wouldn't go w/ a BM because I don't need the internal controls.

 

Go with the BRS pumps. With the reef angel I can set you up with calibration and volume based dosing rather than having to convert to seconds every time you want to make an adjustment

 

You'd still recommend the BRS vs the RA (rebranded Marine Magic or Marine Color)? The only negative comments about the MM/MC is calibration but that may be a moot point if I'm using the RA? The RA is a nice price but if I'm patient, the BRS one's do go on sale and are tried and true.

[lnevo]

From reviews that I've read on the bubble magus doser they cannot be calibrated and the support is not great. You would have to figure out how much each pump is dosing and adjust your volume based on the output. They are very good otherwise and reliable but to adjust it you'd have to go back to the device and do it there. I like the one stop shop i get with my RA.

 

As far as the RA pumps, i have no issues with them that I've heard but the BRS are nice and reliable and its what i'm using so I feel confident recommending them.