Help With Alkalinity

[Gary Majchrzak]

not sure what concentration Brightwell Ca is but more than likely you're paying a LOT of money for calcium chloride solution.

I would pick a calcium and alkalinity supplementation scheme and stick with it.


save these articles and use the online calculator in there

 

[tmz]

0.5ppm phosphate is very high. Periodic low calcium can also be a problem.

 

[MD Ocean Girl]

That is a lot of light for a 40 gal, you may need to reduce your light period. I use a 6x39w ati fixture on my 120 and still need to be careful about bleaching new SPS. I run my blue bulbs for 10 hrs and all 6 for only 6hrs a day.

I know it's a lot of light; Jesse was pretty aggressive when he bought this lighting because the plan was to be able to use it on bigger tanks in the years to come. Before we moved into our current apartment (over 1 1/2 yrs ago), this fixture with the current lightbulb setup was over this tank, and every coral did really well. It was much more of a anemone/softie/LPS dominated tank with just a couple SPS at that time, but we never had the bleaching issues. Even for the first 6 months this tank was set up in our new place, corals weren't bleached. Could it be that the probable 3-4 months of low alk caused the bleaching, and now because of it, the corals can't handle the amount of light on them???

not sure what concentration Brightwell Ca is but more than likely you're paying a LOT of money for calcium chloride solution.

I would pick a calcium and alkalinity supplementation scheme and stick with it.


save these articles and use the online calculator in there

Thanks for the link, Gary. I'll look into the calcium supplementation. Before, the calcium was toward the higher end of the range, so I didn't even think about having to dose it. Evidently, that's no longer the case. And yes, the Brightwell products in general are pretty expensive, so if I can use a less expensive but quality way to increase the calcium, I'll definitely go that route. I think the alk supplementation from the articles you linked is working well; I just need to keep up on monitoring it more with the changes in season since its dosing is tied in with the ATO system.


Do you think the low calcium and magnesium are the culprits for the corals continuing to be bleached/translucent? Or add in the lighting and/or low nutrients as well? Or am I missing something else?

Thanks!

 

[MD Ocean Girl]

0.5ppm phosphate is very high. Periodic low calcium can also be a problem.

What phosphate range should I aim for in this tank?

Phosphates are always a bit tough for me to test for because I only have the API test kit for it. After the water change, phosphates were in between 0-0.25, with the color being closer to 0. I think I'm going to have to get a Hanna phosphate checker so I can better manage the PO4.

I guess I was just a bit too happy about the fact there were phosphates in the tank without having hair algae growth, especially since it took about a year to eradicate it. Another water change today is definitely in order.

 

[tmz]

Anything over 0.1ppm is rough on corals, ime. I prefer less than 0.05ppm.
Low alk and high PO4 together make it very hard for corals to calcify properly. High light can also cause bleaching by encouraging too much zooxanthelae production and O2 production which leads the coral to expel the zooxanthelae ; hence bleaching. Many times, corals can recover from a bleaching event if conditions are corrected. I'd : lower the PO4, stready the alk and calcium and reduce the lighting.