Brace yourselves, this may be a long one.
I set up my "new" tank about a month ago. I moved a while back, and everything has been living in 4 horse troughs for months. Last month I finally got around to getting the new tank properly situated - it is a standard 125 gallon, with a trigger ruby 36 sump and a 20 hex refugium, so let's assume maybe 160-170 gallons total volume.
I have a pretty shallow sand bed of about 1", composed mostly of brand new aragonite. Salt water was made from Oceanic (been using it for 10+ years) and 0TDS water (just changed all filters and the membrane, but that's probably neither here nor there).
About 120lbs of live rock was moved from upstairs to downstairs pretty rapidly, so I basically experienced no cycle of note (I hit maybe 1 nitrate, maybe). Contents of the tank is a few monti frags (cap + danae) totaling maybe 10 square inches, a half dozen Green Bubble-Tip Anemones and a medium sized patch of GSP. Nothing that you would normally think of as a calcium sink.
Parameters on the first weekend were pretty much as I would expect for Oceanic - high calcium (~470 or so) and low-ish alk (just under 7). I did what I would normally do, which was to take care of the alk over the course of a week, at which point the plan would be to dial in my dosers and celebrate a successful tank move.
At the one week mark, alk was about 8.6 (so far so good), and when I tested calcium (which I hadn't really tested at all, because previous experience told me it would be fine) was... 370. So I re-tested and it was still 370 - a drop of 100 in a week with close to nothing in the tank. Unusual. So I then did my best to bring up calcium over the course of the next couple of days, aand my alk is now <7. My pH, which I don't normally pay that much attention to is struggling to even approach 8.
Over the last 2-3 weeks that's been the general struggle - desperately trying to mash enough 2-part into the system to keep calcium and alkalinity at "normal" levels (above 8 for alk, above 400 for calcium). I'm currently dosing about 240ml per day of each, which from past experience at this kind of stocking level is absolutely ridiculous. My current schedule breaks the day into 4 6-hour periods, dosing Ca, Alk, Ca, Alk for 4 hours at a time (on for 15, off for 15 oscillating) with a couple of hours of rest in between. I'm keeping up, but only just.
Other parameters seem pretty normal for a relatively new tank - magnesium is at a pretty good 1350, nitrates and phosphates have been undetectable for weeks, water is crystal clear and the tanks inhabitants (such as they are) seem absolutely fine. I've been running my pumps in vinegar every couple of weeks since it's pretty obvious that all this calcium is going to end up somewhere, but I'm not sure what to do/test/change at this point. The test kits (all Salifert) are testing newly made saltwater as I would expect, and the pH/alk testing seems to be in agreement that alk is generally a bit on the low side, and drops pretty rapidly as soon as dosing stops.
Thoughts would be appreciated.
I set up my "new" tank about a month ago. I moved a while back, and everything has been living in 4 horse troughs for months. Last month I finally got around to getting the new tank properly situated - it is a standard 125 gallon, with a trigger ruby 36 sump and a 20 hex refugium, so let's assume maybe 160-170 gallons total volume.
I have a pretty shallow sand bed of about 1", composed mostly of brand new aragonite. Salt water was made from Oceanic (been using it for 10+ years) and 0TDS water (just changed all filters and the membrane, but that's probably neither here nor there).
About 120lbs of live rock was moved from upstairs to downstairs pretty rapidly, so I basically experienced no cycle of note (I hit maybe 1 nitrate, maybe). Contents of the tank is a few monti frags (cap + danae) totaling maybe 10 square inches, a half dozen Green Bubble-Tip Anemones and a medium sized patch of GSP. Nothing that you would normally think of as a calcium sink.
Parameters on the first weekend were pretty much as I would expect for Oceanic - high calcium (~470 or so) and low-ish alk (just under 7). I did what I would normally do, which was to take care of the alk over the course of a week, at which point the plan would be to dial in my dosers and celebrate a successful tank move.
At the one week mark, alk was about 8.6 (so far so good), and when I tested calcium (which I hadn't really tested at all, because previous experience told me it would be fine) was... 370. So I re-tested and it was still 370 - a drop of 100 in a week with close to nothing in the tank. Unusual. So I then did my best to bring up calcium over the course of the next couple of days, aand my alk is now <7. My pH, which I don't normally pay that much attention to is struggling to even approach 8.
Over the last 2-3 weeks that's been the general struggle - desperately trying to mash enough 2-part into the system to keep calcium and alkalinity at "normal" levels (above 8 for alk, above 400 for calcium). I'm currently dosing about 240ml per day of each, which from past experience at this kind of stocking level is absolutely ridiculous. My current schedule breaks the day into 4 6-hour periods, dosing Ca, Alk, Ca, Alk for 4 hours at a time (on for 15, off for 15 oscillating) with a couple of hours of rest in between. I'm keeping up, but only just.
Other parameters seem pretty normal for a relatively new tank - magnesium is at a pretty good 1350, nitrates and phosphates have been undetectable for weeks, water is crystal clear and the tanks inhabitants (such as they are) seem absolutely fine. I've been running my pumps in vinegar every couple of weeks since it's pretty obvious that all this calcium is going to end up somewhere, but I'm not sure what to do/test/change at this point. The test kits (all Salifert) are testing newly made saltwater as I would expect, and the pH/alk testing seems to be in agreement that alk is generally a bit on the low side, and drops pretty rapidly as soon as dosing stops.
Thoughts would be appreciated.
