alkalinity help please

[heliguy71]

ok thanks

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

You're welcome.

Good luck.

 

[jlinzmaier]

yes but the kalk is keeping it at 440 ppm now and i am dosing 185ml of baking soda with my dosing pump but i need to increase this more i think because alk is still dropping

This may have been overlooked by the others Mike and really doesn't make sense to me. I believe you're saying that your current kalk dosing isn't maintining your alk level (or raising it to where you want it to be ) and you're dosing additional baking soda to boost it. It sounds like your alk is still dropping while your ca is staying stable. Is that correct??

If that is the case, that would be really odd IMO since calcifying reef animals use ca and alk in the same ratio that kalk supplies. Meaning if your adding kalk and baking soda your alk should be raising. If that dosing is keeping alk stable then your ca should be dropping. In your case alk is dropping therefore ca should be dropping even more. By not adding ca and alk in equal proportions will cause an imbalance, or at least a change in there perspective ratio's. If you are seeing ca staying stable and alk dropping while you're adding additional baking soda I think there is a testing discrepency. I have no other explanation for such an odd ocurrence.

Randy, what are your thoughts on that?

As you experiment with baking soda or soda ash dosing to raise your alk, I would highly suggest increasing your alk level slowly and not more than 0.5 dkh per day to prevent stress to the corals.

Jeremy

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I expect that he probably has just not yet run the alk part alone long enough to see calcium drop below desirable levels.