Doomed?

[jasutton]

OK so my girlfriend did a water change on my tank...nice huh? I thought so too...I take a gander at my tank to see one GIANT WHITE CLOUD where there should be coral and other marine life. Turns out she used 5 gallons of my Kalkwasser top off water...(one teaspoon of kalk per gallon) mixed salt with it and used that water.

Question: what do i do? Will this go away? Do i need to do another water change? I added some Carbonate to help buffer, but do i need to do anything else?

pH 8.7, and alk is normal

I did another 5 gal water change (tank is 20gal) with little or no change, should i do more???

PLEASE ADVISE!!
I am a little scared...

 

[spitefull]

OH Jamie,wives and g/f can be so helpfull but sometimes mistakes are made. how are the fish?? the ph swing usually stesses them out or sends them over the rainbowbridge, your ph dosent seem too high considering, water changes wouldnt hurt, good luck

 

[Agu]

I'd suggest you post in the chemistry forum ..............

 

[jasutton]

i know, i already have forgiven her. Cant get angry when she is trying to help. Anyway, update: did about 50% water change, andd nothing is dead as of yet...we will see what tomorrow brings.

 

[smorrow5773]

If everything has survived the ph swing, you should be alright. Nothing you can do until the water clears. At that point, just check all your parameters and adjust as necessary, most likely it will have bottomed out your alkalinity and calcium. This has happened to me before, actually I purposefully do it to a new tank to precipitate out any phosphate or impurities that were released during the cycle. Corraline usually takes off afterwords ime.

 

[djtodd]

I had a seized top off pump that I cleaned up and got working last night. In dumps ~2-3G of Kalk. PH swung up to 8.7, and stayed there for a few hours. By morning, 12 hours later, it was right back at 8.2 ... I imagine that after doing a WC everything should be fine in your case. No casualties over here.

 

[jasutton]

good to ear, thanks for the input all

 

[Attreui]

If you are really monitoring what you are doing and something like this happens you can bring down the pH by adding vinegar to the sump. But a little goes a long way and you dont want to swing it too fast. Vinegar is common in kalk mixes when you are trying to boost Ca without as much pH effect.