Stable alkalinity

[madweazl]

... or so I thought. I had made an AquaticLog account long ago but had never input any data; I keep a written journal for the tank and I finally started to transpose the data from all the measurements I've taken (going back about five months though I have the entire history in the journal). A while back I had a big growth spurt and the alkalinity dropped into the 6.x range though I thought I got it back on track pretty quickly. Looking at the plots, it wasnt nearly as quickly as I thought. More recently, I removed a large monti cap and consumption dropped a bit (everything probably slowed as I was pulling things out of the tank, adding rock, and generally disturbing stuff for a couple days). I've also made an effort to keep better track of my salinity though you wouldn't know it from the results as I only have a few data points (I've checked it much more frequently than I have written data for, gotta do a better job and actually capturing the data). While everything seems so obvious and I do have much of it written down, it was eye opening to see it plotted. Here I thought I was doing so well with keeping things really steady. 

 

Point to all that rambling? There may be some value in the data if you're a bonehead like me and think you've been doing a better job than you actually have. 

 

Alkalinity (not as stable as I had anticipated). 7.5 is my target based on how well things have done at that level. 

 

Calcium

 

Magnesium

 

Nitrates

 

Phosphates

 

I also stumbled across my Kil-A-Watt meter today when we were rummaging around in some of our stored "junk." With everything running normally with the exception of a dosing pump and the heaters, the tank only draws 327 watts (2.83 amps) with the lights at full power (70% intensity in my case). With the heaters on, it jumps up to 604 watts which for whatever reason, is closer to what I had imagined it was consuming. 

 

Edit: guess I should have labeled the post "Stable Parameters" instead. 

Edited January 14, 2018 by madweazl

[gmerek2]

I feel for you. I’m constantly fighting alk. Test once a day now. Seems to fluctuate for no reason sometimes. It makes me want to consider a calcium reactor. But maybe the grass just appears greener on the other side.

[madweazl]

Corals have been fine but it certainly moves more than I had anticipated (thankfully not quickly in that regard). 

[GOSKN5]

I am with you.. I think I have it dialed in and dose accordingly for a few days.. test and it's usuallt higher than desired...

 

What test kits you use?

 

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[madweazl]

For alkalinity, I use Hanna. Today I used the Hanna and the Salifert kits but used a Red Sea sourced syringe to fill both samples; the Hanna measure 7.9 and the Salifert was 7.85. These tests were usually .2-.3 different when I used the Salifert syringe for it's test and some other syringe for the Hanna (I gave up trying to line up the meniscus about a year ago I think). 

[Origami]

.... and some other syringe for the Hanna (I gave up trying to line up the meniscus about a year ago I think). 

FWIW, I use a syringe, too, when filling my Hanna checker with 10 ml of tank water. I find it a lot quicker and more repeatable.

[madweazl]

FWIW, I use a syringe, too, when filling my Hanna checker with 10 ml of tank water. I find it a lot quicker and more repeatable.

The repeatability is exactly why I changed. Even if it skews the results a small amount, at least it's consistent.