Crashing!

[supernareg]

ammonia <.25

nitrite < .05

nitrate < 8

pH 8.5 (i OD'd on baking soda last night )

alk went from 1.3- 3mel/l over 2 days (i panicked n too much baking soda went in.



i'm doing a 15 gallon water change on a 45 gal total volume system (2nd 15 gallon water change, last 1 was 4 days ago)



about 100 bux worth of my BEAUTIFUL purple tip SPS has bleached.

all my snails died, my turbo's barely hanging on.

i bought carbon and as soon as i figure out how to put it in (find a bag i mean) i'ma put it in.

and i had the lights off for about 2.5 days... so the corals dont open up fully.

 

[supernareg]

no one?

 

[arts007]

Has the tank been setup for awhile? and all of the sudden you started getting ammonia and nitrite? anything new added rock, fish...etc. Were the parameters all 0 prior to this?
I would definitely keep up the water changes, add the carbon and maybe a poly filter. If your going to be adding baking soda to raise alk or pH, i use this , tells you how much you will need without going nuts

 

[Icefire]

3meq/L is all good, you did add too much.
3 days without light might affect the sps.

Overdosing backing soda will LOWER the PH @ 8.0...

 

[HolyScoly]

how old is this tank?

 

[supernareg]

tank is atleast a year old.

 

[dendro982]

Could be saturation of the sandbed by wastes, and it can't process them anymore. Disturbing it during the water change added decomposing matter in the water column. Just a thought.

You, of course, are checking the each new batch of the salt - testing the newly prepared water before adding to the tank. One of the mine had alkalinity above 15 dKH.

Is the weekly detritus accumulation under the LR small?