Calcium very elevated

[jcarlilesiu]

Hi All. Need some guidance with some wacky numbers in my reef. All coral looks good, good polyp extension. SPS dominated tank, with some Zoas and an LPS torch. Everything looks happy.Transferred from a small tank to a new Red Sea 200XL G2 3 months ago.I am having a really hard time with calcium that is off the charts. Hanna tester flashes 600 meaning it is beyond the measurement limit. All other levels tested with Hanna and refractometer as follows:

Salinity: 1.024 ppm
PH: 8.6
Alkalinity: 126 ppm/7 dKH
Nitrate: 1.8 ppm
Phosphate: .04 ppm
Mag: 1220 ppm
Calcium: 600+ ppm

I setup this 42 gallon tank to utilize the Red Sea Complete Care 4-part dosing system. I am capable of manually dosing KH to try to get that up, but I am afraid that will also increase the PH which is at it's high limit threshold.

No other dosing is happening. Not sure where the extra ordinarily high Calcium is coming from. I am performing two 10% water changes weekly, so I did test my mixed and heated saltwater bin used for changes. It is testing at 522 calcium using Red Sea Coral Pro salt.Is this a salt issue? Should I be concerned of the super high Calcium? Should I be dosing KH due to it's relative lowness allowing for more calcium uptake? Should I switch salts? Leave it alone?

Appreciate any input.

 

[griss]

Sounds to me like you got a bad batch of salt with elevated Ca levels. If had this happen to me with two different buckets of salt (both different batch numbers) where the Ca was super high and the Alk super low.

Another thing is, our salt can “settle” or stratify. I keep my salt in a bucket and whenever I add a bag to the bucket, I always roll the bucket around a bit to make sure the salt is mixed well.

 

[JCOLE]

Do you have another Calcium test kit? I have the Hanna checker as well but haven't used it for a long time. It is notoriously inaccurate due to human error. I just stick to the Salifert Calcium kit now because it is cheap, quick, and accurate. I would try another brand test just to make sure it isn't the Hanna.