I'll try to be as short winded as possible...
My tank has been setup for a little over a year. Has a few stony corals and quite a few soft corals, its a 75g tank with 20ish gallon sump. I'd say the flow is pretty low as I only have two power heads that are rated for nano tanks and an 1800 gph return pump which I've got dialed down quite a bit. I do have an apex with temp cond ph and orp probes if any of the info from those would be helpful I'd be happy to post. I test Alk and Calc weekly (except a week or two missed occasionally) and mag biweekly. I use a Hanna Checker for the Alk and red sea kits for Calc and mag. I log all of this info as well for the last at least 5 months if any of that is helpful as well. The tank is stocked fairly lightly in my opinion, two smaller sized black occe clowns, a royal gramma, a cardinal and probably 50 or so crabs and snails of assorted types. I have probably 100 pounds of rock in the tank and 40 pounds of sand. It was originally a bare bottom tank and probably 8 months ago added the sand. Over the past 3 months I've had a terrible time maintaining Alk. Seems like I can double my dose daily and still will be around 7.0 dkh when I test that sunday. I was reading some people mentioning it could be related to abiotic precipitation possibly in the sandbed etc. Coraline growth has stopped and it almost seems like there is precipitate increasing on the rocks even. I have heavy precipitation on the heaters and pump in the sump, circ pumps dont really have precipitate at all. The rocks almost look like they have snow on them from what i think is precipitate build up? I did lose a fish a month or two ago and couldnt find him anywhere could decaying fish (even several months later) contribute to this? I didnt notice abnormally low pH on my apex after i lost him... Couldnt seem to find him at all so he could have jumped out or be stuck under a rock. I lost a snail at one point and he was devoured by crabs in less than two hours so I doubt there would be anything lingering from a fish that died months ago. Corals seem to survive and grow but slowly for sure. My tank in my bedroom has much better growth. When I originally started seeing the alk fall, I was using Kalk in my ATO. I thought it was a side effect of that so I switched to an all two part dosing method. That still didn't help me raise the alk. At some points I could get the calc above or at normal levels and then that would fall too within the week. I've switched to both kalk and two part for now in an attempt to keep levels high enough. I know you may say 7.0 dkh is fine and the ocean is around that, however I STRUGGLE to keep it at that. There was a week that I was curious if it would settle out at 7.0 and didnt dose for a day or two except the normal recommended dose (13.2 or something ml of both calc and alk 2 part daily with the alk in the morning and calc at night) and it dropped down to 5.9 at one point and 6.5 at another point. I've recently experimented with increasing the temperature in the tank. (raised 1.5 degrees F) I'm not sure the exact temp in the tank because I have a few contradicting readings. My temp probe in my Display reads around 79.5 (after raising the 1.5 degrees) other apex probe in the sump reads 78.1 + or - .5 degrees on both of those, and the heater I have shows constant at 83-84... (i had it set at 80 and the apex's would turn it off if they saw the tank go higher than 79 i believe). I've read quite a bit about what could be causing it and really would appreciate someone that could give me some steps to follow to isolate the issue or at least resolve it in some way. I've been doing biweekly water changes of around 40-50% which is a bit of a pain and not cheap but even that doesnt seem to keep the alk up. I was thinking it could possibly be my salt mix (I use the cheap instant ocean purple stuff) but i tested and that showed 10.0 alk on my hanna 24 hours after mixing... What are the steps I should take to safely and quickly resolve this? I really appreciate anyone who reads through all this, and even more anyone who has their two cents or ideas.
My tank has been setup for a little over a year. Has a few stony corals and quite a few soft corals, its a 75g tank with 20ish gallon sump. I'd say the flow is pretty low as I only have two power heads that are rated for nano tanks and an 1800 gph return pump which I've got dialed down quite a bit. I do have an apex with temp cond ph and orp probes if any of the info from those would be helpful I'd be happy to post. I test Alk and Calc weekly (except a week or two missed occasionally) and mag biweekly. I use a Hanna Checker for the Alk and red sea kits for Calc and mag. I log all of this info as well for the last at least 5 months if any of that is helpful as well. The tank is stocked fairly lightly in my opinion, two smaller sized black occe clowns, a royal gramma, a cardinal and probably 50 or so crabs and snails of assorted types. I have probably 100 pounds of rock in the tank and 40 pounds of sand. It was originally a bare bottom tank and probably 8 months ago added the sand. Over the past 3 months I've had a terrible time maintaining Alk. Seems like I can double my dose daily and still will be around 7.0 dkh when I test that sunday. I was reading some people mentioning it could be related to abiotic precipitation possibly in the sandbed etc. Coraline growth has stopped and it almost seems like there is precipitate increasing on the rocks even. I have heavy precipitation on the heaters and pump in the sump, circ pumps dont really have precipitate at all. The rocks almost look like they have snow on them from what i think is precipitate build up? I did lose a fish a month or two ago and couldnt find him anywhere could decaying fish (even several months later) contribute to this? I didnt notice abnormally low pH on my apex after i lost him... Couldnt seem to find him at all so he could have jumped out or be stuck under a rock. I lost a snail at one point and he was devoured by crabs in less than two hours so I doubt there would be anything lingering from a fish that died months ago. Corals seem to survive and grow but slowly for sure. My tank in my bedroom has much better growth. When I originally started seeing the alk fall, I was using Kalk in my ATO. I thought it was a side effect of that so I switched to an all two part dosing method. That still didn't help me raise the alk. At some points I could get the calc above or at normal levels and then that would fall too within the week. I've switched to both kalk and two part for now in an attempt to keep levels high enough. I know you may say 7.0 dkh is fine and the ocean is around that, however I STRUGGLE to keep it at that. There was a week that I was curious if it would settle out at 7.0 and didnt dose for a day or two except the normal recommended dose (13.2 or something ml of both calc and alk 2 part daily with the alk in the morning and calc at night) and it dropped down to 5.9 at one point and 6.5 at another point. I've recently experimented with increasing the temperature in the tank. (raised 1.5 degrees F) I'm not sure the exact temp in the tank because I have a few contradicting readings. My temp probe in my Display reads around 79.5 (after raising the 1.5 degrees) other apex probe in the sump reads 78.1 + or - .5 degrees on both of those, and the heater I have shows constant at 83-84... (i had it set at 80 and the apex's would turn it off if they saw the tank go higher than 79 i believe). I've read quite a bit about what could be causing it and really would appreciate someone that could give me some steps to follow to isolate the issue or at least resolve it in some way. I've been doing biweekly water changes of around 40-50% which is a bit of a pain and not cheap but even that doesnt seem to keep the alk up. I was thinking it could possibly be my salt mix (I use the cheap instant ocean purple stuff) but i tested and that showed 10.0 alk on my hanna 24 hours after mixing... What are the steps I should take to safely and quickly resolve this? I really appreciate anyone who reads through all this, and even more anyone who has their two cents or ideas.
