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Getting out of a bad cycle?

borker

borker

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Need some help here. Per my tank journal I’m relatively new to dosing and this is my first small tank.

What’s happened:
- my raja chalice from @ofzakaria started dying
- I tested my alk - it had been stable but had dropped to 6.5
- slowly increased my all for reef dosing (10%) but it was still hanging low at 7.1-7.4
- I upped dosing again (10% more) and did a couple of spot doses
- ran out of Alk test for Hanna ordered new reagent
- no tests for 3 days
- 2 tests today are 11.5 alk

I am in a bad spiral here.

What’s going on? Reagent? The small dose increases suddenly swinging the balance like crazy?

2 babies at home - so not tons of time to debug.

Any strategies or experience here?


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I think since you upped the dosing the alk just kept going up since the rate of consumption didn't change(if anything it may have slightly decreased as you changed your parameters). I'd shut off dosing until alk is around 10 - 10.5, then start it dialed back 20% from what it is now. In a few days you should be back to 8-9ish. Then you need to readjust based on your tank's consumption to keep it stable.
 
Test one day and don't dose anything for 24 hours. test again after 24 hours. plug your info into this calculator http://reef.diesyst.com/chemcalc/chemcalc.html
for "current alk" put 8.0 and" desired alk" put 8.0 + whatever your alk dropped in 24hr.

Whatever amount it tells you is what you should be dosing per day.

There are lots of things that can cause your alk to change. Small changes are always key.

As @Adit0 said, you don't want to up your dosing to raise it. Up your dosing if it's continuing to go down. If it's stable but you just want to raise it, just do manual dosi g on top of your automated dosing
 
Coral reefer said:
I have a trident sitting around... you don’t have apex tho do you?
Click to expand...

No. X1 doser is my first attempt at any kind of automation other than ATO.

Posted a thread in buy / sell / trade and maybe someone will have the other stuff I need?

Happy to cobble together parts or buy some stuff new. Just don’t know what to buy - and it all has to fit in the cabinet under my nano.


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This has definitely happened to me a few times in the past and I always found the best way out to be water changes. Up your water change schedule and percentage and just do a bunch over a 2 week period. This should stabilize your levels to whatever the salt mix is and at least get you back to a stable level to work with.
 
The_Lazy_Reefer said:
This has definitely happened to me a few times in the past and I always found the best way out to be water changes. Up your water change schedule and percentage and just do a bunch over a 2 week period. This should stabilize your levels to whatever the salt mix is and at least get you back to a stable level to work with.
Click to expand...

Yeah reef crystals are like 11dkh normally so should I just aim to stabilize there instead of 9?

Otherwise each water change will be a dkh shock...


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borker said:
Yeah reef crystals are like 11dkh normally so should I just aim to stabilize there instead of 9?

Otherwise each water change will be a dkh shock...


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Click to expand...
It’s always good practice to try and keep your alk close to the salt mix you use for less impact.
 
borker said:
Yeah reef crystals are like 11dkh normally so should I just aim to stabilize there instead of 9?

Otherwise each water change will be a dkh shock...


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Click to expand...
if you're not doing a full water change, the impact per change should be within 1dkh. using a salt that matches your target is ideal but not an absolute in my book. I use reef crystals, but aim my tank about 8.8. when (and if ) I do a WC, it's usually 10 - 15%...sometimes 20%. not enough to throw my system out of whack.
 
I have a 40G - I have been doing 8G at a time. I can do less, but feel like the tank gets dirty pretty quickly.
 
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