Pastey
New member
Hanna Alk and Cal checkers came in last night and, for the first time, I got results that I trust.
My Alk was 9.6 and my Cal was 404. These both seem reasonable and I was sort of surprised because I just kind of made an educated guess on the levels of kalk to add in my top off water. I currently add 8 tsp of kalk per 5 gallons of top off water so it's not quite saturated yet.
That said, I must now move on to testing for mag and phosphates to see what is limiting growth. I'm trying to pinpoint my lack of LPS and coralline growth which is pretty much non-existent. My pH isn't perfect with lows in the 7.8-7.9 and highs in the 8.0-8.1 range but it's way better than it was pre-kalk which was mid 7's consistently.
While I do have GHA in my tank, I have essentially halted growth since I started dosing vodka and am now up to 4.6mL daily dose level. I plan to hold here for a bit and see how the tank reacts over the course of a few weeks.
I've recently made adjustments to my lighting intensity, duration and spectrum. I've increased the overall intensity, shortened the schedule to make the duration more natural and increased the color spectrum. This was all pretty recent so it's too soon to tell how the corals will react.
Anything I'm missing or maybe should consider? I think I've got a mag test so I'll give that a look tonight but if the test kit is out of date, I'll probably trust it as much as I trusted my other tests before the Hanna checker.
My Alk was 9.6 and my Cal was 404. These both seem reasonable and I was sort of surprised because I just kind of made an educated guess on the levels of kalk to add in my top off water. I currently add 8 tsp of kalk per 5 gallons of top off water so it's not quite saturated yet.
That said, I must now move on to testing for mag and phosphates to see what is limiting growth. I'm trying to pinpoint my lack of LPS and coralline growth which is pretty much non-existent. My pH isn't perfect with lows in the 7.8-7.9 and highs in the 8.0-8.1 range but it's way better than it was pre-kalk which was mid 7's consistently.
While I do have GHA in my tank, I have essentially halted growth since I started dosing vodka and am now up to 4.6mL daily dose level. I plan to hold here for a bit and see how the tank reacts over the course of a few weeks.
I've recently made adjustments to my lighting intensity, duration and spectrum. I've increased the overall intensity, shortened the schedule to make the duration more natural and increased the color spectrum. This was all pretty recent so it's too soon to tell how the corals will react.
Anything I'm missing or maybe should consider? I think I've got a mag test so I'll give that a look tonight but if the test kit is out of date, I'll probably trust it as much as I trusted my other tests before the Hanna checker.