alkalinity burn

Frankysreef

Frankysreef

Active member
Ok, I think I have figured out my problem that I have had in the last mo or two...

6 mo's ago, I cranked up my calc reactor, and added a kalkwasser reactor, for my acros were growing out of control, and just taking as much calcium as I could put in the system...


Let these systems run for a while..

Calcium finally stabilized at around 450.. but thenn...

Some frags just started slowly dieing...

The ones that first started were the ones that werent in really that much flow.. Getting choked off by other acros.

Couldnt really figure it out..

fragged em and they were fine... I checked my alkalinity 11.5 - 12.. some people say that that is fine...

I noticed my colors were off a bit... It looked like a "burn"? on some of the acros...

Some acros didnt seem to care, but a few were seriously unhappy...

My LPS didnt open anymore, my xenia and anthelia were fine, along with my mushrooms.

The alk is now down to 9, and the lps have opened up 100%.

I also added 2 more seio 1500's ( total 4 ) + dolphin 3600

I think this is an interesting problem that some people may overlook... my 2 cents.
 
i noticed my caps in my tank started to get the "burn" at about 12 DKH i lowered it to around 9-10 DKH polyp extension is 2 times better at this DKH than 12 also my cap isn't getting the "burn" anymore since the lowering of my alk all my acros and caps look great, i only noticed the "burn" on the caps as i saw a decrease in polyp extension over just a day i tested my alk and saw it was 12 DKH, but it took me over a month to get from 9 DKH to 12 so aclimation shouldn't have been an issue.

ill keep my tank between 9-10 DKH from now on though i have noticed the best growth and PE at these levels.
 
IMO there is no good reason to run your SPS any higher than 8.0 dkh. NSW is 7.0- 8.0 so running it at 8.0 is already the high side of NSW. Increasing the DKH only increases your chances for problems IMO.
 
yes, if you have any pics, i would like to see. I think this may have occurred a month or so ago to a few of my corals. The tips looked like they got chopped off.....I thought maybe it was from too much calk so i pulled that back. Everything is fine now.
 
Ya I would like to see too. Coz I think I have corals with similar problems.

About 6 weeks back my alk shot up to 15 dkh, due to my lack of water test and monitoring. I have a few acros that have the tips die off, my bird nests and stylos all have tissue peeling off, my monti start to bleach. Funny thing is some of my other acros have no ill effect at all, even side by side with another dying acro.

Fragging doesn't seem to stop the recession. And now even though I have my alk back to 9-10 dkh for about a month, the affected pieces continue to waste away. Is there no way to save them?
 
Hey you guys realy want to be freaked out. I just tested my tanks alk and its 13.5. Now talk about having a high alk. The thing is that I dont see any issues with my sps at all. I did turn down the ca reactor so that it will lower my tanks alk. As far as my CA goes I still have to test that. Oh and before some one says anything, I did the test twice just to make sure.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7760229#post7760229 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Frankysreef
I'll post when some of my colors get richer. 9-10 sounds good... the issues I had were when it went over 11
Click to expand...

Glad everything is getting better Frank :)
 
Yes, the tips on some of my green birdsnest got burned. But the rest of the polyps are doing strong.

Hey Eric I tested my mag and it is fine. I think it was just the alk burn. Since I dropped it, I think some of the corals stopped. One of my fav little frags has a 1/8 inch of life on it, and it looks like it is doing well.

I will add more calcium chloride today. I'll try to get it to 8.

Mario, it took a long time for my corals to be affected by the alk. I also have some LPS, and they receded after time.

13.5 is really high, just for safetys sake I would slowly drop it down a bit.
 
yeah as soon as I saw that I was like Holy shiz. I turned the ca reactor down but left the kalk reactor on. I will let the corals take up the alk and measure every day till its at a good levels
 
The advice that I got from Eric "fragfarmer" was to turn the kalk reactor off, and dose with turbo calc.

I may not use mine in the future....
 
I've also offline my kalkreactor since the episode. I see you guys have been able to turn around some of the affected corals but no such luck for me. Maybe the duration of the alk burn was too long.....

Have lost all my birdnest and 3 of my stylos. My sole surviving one isn't doing too well.
 
This same thing happend to me! I had a kalk reactor and came to realize that it was dosing pure acidic water into my tank. It was so alkaline that I could not get readings on the water coming out of the reactor. It shot my Alk to 15:( All my caps suffered and so did my digi's. I have since gotten rid of the kalk reactor and hence went back to adding kalk everynow and again to the top off resevoir. Now my tank is back down to a steady 8.5 and everything is thriving again. My caps are coloring back up full strong and great PE on them as well. All my digi's are now showing full PE as well. During the alk spike they would stay shut and not happy.....

I am starting to think that a kalk reactor is better off used with a calcium reactor to even things out. The calcium reactor is not in the budget so I am sticking to the old school methods. I know they aren't as consitant and perfect but they work for most.

I think everyone's tank is specific to certain things and if you are keeping SPS you should monitor things very closely for the next weeks to come to make sure you don't loose to many corals. Luckily I didn't loose a thing and my alk was at 14-15 for three weeks while I tried to get it down. Water changes only dropped it slowly. Which is a good thing. I ended up having to top off with PURE RO with nothing added. My RO PH is 6 and has very little traceable alk in it. My only worry was dropping the PH, but its holding around 8.2.

Good luck with your tank.
Spankey:)
 
Yeah, I think over a few weeks once you get the alk back down (Slowly though) you will notice the corals start to respond... Good luck. It took me a few weeks but now everything is doing much better...

Spank
 
I would try to get it to at least 8. I read that NSW is around 7 so to shoot for that cant' be bad. I am still getting mine down to this to see how things fair. Although I had a buddy that ran his tank at a consistant 9 all the time and his SPS grew so fast he could not give frags away fast enough...

Consistancy is the key. Get it to around 7-8 and try to hold it there. I am done with the kalk reactor. Until I can invest in a calcium reactor, I can't see running one with out it....Kalk reactor that is...

Spankey
 
I had a friend bring by a Purple Monster colony, That I suspect was a victim of high alk. I tried to frag it and save some of it but it all died. Luckily he still has two frags that are living. He said his alk was around 14 when he started having trouble.
 
Question:
it seems from reading this that most "alkalinity burn" cases (pardon the parantheses, but I have never heard of this in my life as a chem major; probably different terminology) seem to be associated with kalk reactors. If that is the case, could it be that, while the total alkalinity is high, the carbonate alkalinity is too low? After all, the alkalinity of kalkwasser is based on OH- (hydroxyl) molecules, rather than CO3- (carbonate) molecules.
 
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