dosing help

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paul1989

New member
Not sure if this is the right section to post this problem in its my first time posting on reef central and id like to start with saying what a great site this is and spend most of my spare time reading the forums and my favorite is reading tank of the month would love for mine to be in there one day

Now to my problem about a month ago I got a dosing pump and switched to randys 2 part I got a few sps frags just before the switch and they were doing grate till all but 1 got stn. I found the problem it was that the test kits i was using were reading EXTREAMLY LOW. now im trying to get my levels up it just seems not to work im dosing 250ml of cal and 220ml alk daily with the levels still at 400ppm cal and 130ppm alk im aiming for 420ppm cal and 150ppm alk so I dont need much I just cant seem to get them there any help will be greatly appreciated

Thanks

My tank is a 4x2x2 120g with 90g sump mostly lps with the one small acro colony and a heap of zoa frags
 
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Could be precipitation if you are not spreading the doses out enough.. Do you notice white build up on your heaters or powerhead? Dosing into high flow imo is important to get especially the alk part into the water..
 
Its set up on a dosing pump cal 800-1800 and alk 2000-600. I was worried about the flow aswell so iv put a wavemaker in the sump so that's definitely not the pproblem.there is definitely some white stuff on the side of my skimmer but none on heaters or anything like that.
 
You should definitely ask this in the chemistry forum though =).

Have you tested what your consumption is over the course of a day? If you have a lot of coraline algae that In itself consumes quite a bit.. The precipitation on the skimmer could be the culprit.. Is it hard and chalky? I dose right above my return pump to make sure it's going where it should =)

What does a calculator say you should be dosing for your volume of water at your consumption?


My course of action would be to make sure I verified my results on more than one test kit. Maybe a water change before testing. Get my levels close to where I want them by hand dosing over the course of a day.. Track my consumption over the course of 1-3 days.. Use the calculator to get a starting point for the amount I should be dosing and tweak it from there I personally like to spread my doses over the course of 24hr to keep the alk drop to a minimum instead of just once per part. Are you checking your pH after dosing alk for that long?

Beyond that Idk I have read where people were having issues raising levels and it turned out to be there sand calcified into a rock/concrete texture and was precipitating the alk/cal and had to be removed. GFO also can affect alkalinity to a point.

Good luck man hope you get it figured out and welcome to reef central.. Also your sps will be fine with stability of the numbers vs trying to get to a magical set number.. As long as your above 7dkh on alk and 380 cal you should be fine with those #'s for sps. I didn't do the conversion on the alk but the cal seems fine to me =).
 
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Yeah the precipitation is definitely hard and chalky what causes that? Iv got the hard line from the dosing pump dropping straight onto a wave maker in the sump and the protein skimmer is directly in the path of the wave maker. Iv got each alk and cal dosing 10x over the day and a 2 hour break before the other. I thought precipitation was cause by dosing to close to each other. I have a bit of coralline but not nowhere near enough to suck up this amount. Pages im reading people are using 100ml or less with the same size tank. What calculator are you taking about?

Thanks for your help
 
This is the calculator that I use. There are a few out there that are pretty much the same.. I'm sure rc probably has one on the home page also.. Very useful to have on hand .
http://reef.diesyst.com/chemcalc/chemcalc.html

Another thing could be causing it is there isn't enough flow moving thru your sump for the amount your dosing, It seems to me that it's precipitating and circulating around the sump long enough to cause issues. ..

I believe most people dose into the return chamber (I do) of the sump so it's a straight/quicker path to the larger amount of water and gets as evenly dispersed as possible..

And also I don't dose before my skimmer it's something that was told to me years ago but I don't really have a reason why or know really if it matters ..

I would dose them away from each other in the return chamber of the sump close to the return pump and see if that helps..
 
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Dapg8gt said:
This is the calculator that I use. There are a few out there that are pretty much the same.. I'm sure rc probably has one on the home page also.. Very useful to have on hand .
http://reef.diesyst.com/chemcalc/chemcalc.html

Another thing could be causing it is there isn't enough flow moving thru your sump for the amount your dosing, It seems to me that it's precipitating and circulating around the sump long enough to cause issues. ..

I believe most people dose into the return chamber (I do) of the sump so it's a straight/quicker path to the larger amount of water and gets as evenly dispersed as possible..

And also I don't dose before my skimmer it's something that was told to me years ago but I don't really have a reason why or know really if it matters ..

I would dose them away from each other in the return chamber of the sump close to the return pump and see if that helps..
Click to expand...

I have it in the return chamber of the sump. My sump was custom designed with max volume in mind it is 2 acrylic tanks.1 is a refugium/frang tank the other holds everthimg else. my skimmer is a octopus 5000 so it takes up most of one tank with the output of the skimmer going into a 7inch filter sock at the other end of the tank. I have about 10000lph going through the sump as well as a 5000lph power head/wave maker so I really am struggling to see how it can't be getting mixed I drops straight onto a 5000lph pump. So to try explain it better the dosing unit is pumping into a tank which has a 12000lph max return, 6000lph max skimmer pump and a 5000lph max wave maker. Meaning in a 50g tank there is max water flow of 23000lph (I'm saying max because they are all dc controllable not set to max they are bout 3/4 and they get changed every now and again) that's why im stumped how it can't be getting mixed
 
Another question before I go make another tube holder lol why would it matter if the outputs are next to each other? there is a 2 hour gap between each part getting dosed
 
paul1989 said:
Another question before I go make another tube holder lol why would it matter if the outputs are next to each other? there is a 2 hour gap between each part getting dosed
Click to expand...

If they're never on at the same time or close to the same time then that's not the issue.
 
Okay thanks. Would this hole dosing thing be the reason that all of my pumps froze yesterday and I had to soak the all in vinegar to get them to spin again. Would that be calcium build up?
 
Okay so the problem isnt getting better probably worse cal dropped to 350ppm so I have stopped the dosing pump and iv bought some calcium and alk commercial products to try get the levels up has anyone had any problems with randys 2 part? The levels just wont go up!
 
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