Short Story - I had an alk spike from around 8 to an 11 presumably overnight. There is potential that happened slowly while I was on vacation last week, but I had a CaRX malfunction after working on it last night and alk was 11 this morning. This was the first test since before vacation so not entirely sure when the spike happened. Everything looked good before I messed with the reactor, no signs of alk spike yet. Yes, I double checked the reading with another kit.
My question is, do any of you have any advice on minimizing stress/losses?
I've shut my reactor off for now, I don't plan on doing any water changes, and i'll just let alk fall naturally. How many days should I take to lower it (or how much dkh per day is safe)? I dose phos and nitrate, so I added a little this morning to try to make sure i'm not nutrient deficient. I'm considering turning my lights down for the next several days. Good idea? Any other advice, let me know. Thanks.
Details of the story if you care -
So I got back from vacation a couple days ago, and before I left I ordered one of the new Kamoer continuous duty peristaltic pumps for my CaRX since I was having trouble controlling my reactor effluent and was having to check/flush it daily. Naturally, I was excited to hook it up when I got home. So last night, I installed the pump, and of course what I expected to take 30 minutes took 3 hours due to an air leak on the recirc pump that had to be fixed. I finally got it all set up, calibrated the pump and set the drip rate to where it had been running.
I woke up this morning, tested the alk and it was at 11. I looked at my reactor pH and it was a 1.5. I'm not sure if that was accurate, because my media wasn't mush, but either way my CO2 solenoid had obviously stuck open because the CO2 was still going. Tank pH was still around 8.3 so I don't think I had too bad of a pH swing If at all.
My question is, do any of you have any advice on minimizing stress/losses?
I've shut my reactor off for now, I don't plan on doing any water changes, and i'll just let alk fall naturally. How many days should I take to lower it (or how much dkh per day is safe)? I dose phos and nitrate, so I added a little this morning to try to make sure i'm not nutrient deficient. I'm considering turning my lights down for the next several days. Good idea? Any other advice, let me know. Thanks.
Details of the story if you care -
So I got back from vacation a couple days ago, and before I left I ordered one of the new Kamoer continuous duty peristaltic pumps for my CaRX since I was having trouble controlling my reactor effluent and was having to check/flush it daily. Naturally, I was excited to hook it up when I got home. So last night, I installed the pump, and of course what I expected to take 30 minutes took 3 hours due to an air leak on the recirc pump that had to be fixed. I finally got it all set up, calibrated the pump and set the drip rate to where it had been running.
I woke up this morning, tested the alk and it was at 11. I looked at my reactor pH and it was a 1.5. I'm not sure if that was accurate, because my media wasn't mush, but either way my CO2 solenoid had obviously stuck open because the CO2 was still going. Tank pH was still around 8.3 so I don't think I had too bad of a pH swing If at all.
