I need suggestions on lowering my alk

Yes, you can keep sps and clams w/ those params.... Once you introduce new sps corals, clams, and other calcifying organisms, you will be posting on how to get those params up...LOL.. Since you don't dose, and with good reason, you have very few competing calcifying inhabitants, there really is no need to dose. However, I would plan on employing either a calcium reactor, or a 2 part calc/ alk supplement prior to putting anything in there. Give yourself a chance to use these supplements, as to dial in your water to your desired levels. IME, stability is the key to the type of reef you are looking to keep. OT, but I recently added an auto top off system, and have seen great responses from my corals for doing so. If you are new to SPS, IMHO, I would take things slowly. Buy a piece, and see its effect on calcium and mag intake. You will be surprised how much they intake......Good luck.
 
Ok I'm sing my sali tests right now and will see where I am, my mag is at 1100, so I'm going to try that super dosing that waterfaller suggested then do doses to stablize it, alk is still around 11.6 dkh, Calc is stable at 460.
 
I have 2 softie reefs already going a 37 thats really just an office tank with some amazing zoas and some tyree limited leathers and a big 125 softie reef where i can't keep my toadstools from growing and a sps 55 gal reef, everything in the 55 will be moving to the 90 gal sps reef soon so I'm not new to reefs and dosing calc and alk, I've just never had the alk jump so high on me and refuse to go down.
 
jsl6v8,
Sorry if I doubted your level of knowledge, if I offended, certainly not my intent. I had an issue of High Alk, a year back(15-16dkh), so I find this thread very interesting to me. I still would not worry so much about your alk though, alot of avid sps reef keepers strive to keep an elavated alk. Good luck with your new set up and let us know how it works out.....
 
Korillas work real nice. The flow is really spread out, I use on the back side of my tank to push detritus out in the open, where the seios blast it into the water column....I am using the 400gph korillas, and think they did a great thing by making the glass mount standard.
 
I really hate the little suction cups I got on most of my pumps, tempted to glue a magnet on all of them and put one on the outside, seems like there isn't a week that goes by where a suction cup here or there doesn't give out on me. Where can you buy new suction cups??
 
I am in the process of buying the glass mounts for all my powerheads. It is not as big of a deal for me anymore, due to going BB, no sandstorms here...LOL... However, I would hate to see one of my powerheads drop and break any of my corals, that would suck......As for suction cups, I would imagine any lfs should carry them....
 
hmm those are neat not much more and you can get a brand new koralia though, I've been looking at the koralias for a while, wish they had those flow defusers for them, I love the hydor flow defusers.
 
I would have agreee with jsl6v8 as far as being okay
natural seawater in or around reefs averages around 2.9 meq/l or a dkh value. This is based upon several different publications of which I have taken an average. Here is an interesting link from Reefkeeping
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-05/rhf/index.php
Hope this helps with a proven source of information.
I think mg is a little on the low side whcih can cause a difference in the uptake of calcium possible relating to ph values and greater hardeness values.
I also agree with waterfaller stop with the ph buffer and if need be adjust the two part mixture to obtain your goals. Hope this helps
 
Love my Koralia's except the wavemaker maikes them rattle more than a modded mj1200, but hey are smaller and havea much wider dispersion of current
 
well I did a dose of the vinegar to help lower my alk, it successfully lowered my ph from 8.3 to 8.0 and managed to not do jack to my alk, so I think I wont be doing that again.

Ok so what do you all do to raise your ph, I have no intention of going out and buying a co2 tank and all that jazz thats just to expensive for me to care to mess with, those of you who don't use a CO2 tank what do you use and does it cause your alk to jump real bad?
 
I wouldn't mess with a CO2 tank. Injecting that in your tank will lower ph.

An alk of 11 isn't really bad and many keep it at that level. I shoot for 9dkh personally and I've had over 16 before by accident with zero issues. Test your newly made water. It might be 11dkh already and that is your issue. If you use 2 Part, don't dose the alk portion till it drops and adjust from there.

As for your ph, a ph of 8 isn't bad by any means. 8.3 is better but for 6 months, my tank was running at 7.8 to 7.9. Stability had to set in for it to start raising. As long as your ph is between that range and does not rise/lower significantly, then you should be fine. While we all try to shoot for those magic numbers, there is always a little leeway to both sides. The most important thing is keeping the change to a minimal.

I've read keeping alk above 12 has known to cause SPS corals more brittle over time. I do not recall if that was tested so I'm not sure of the validity of it.

Hope that helps.
 
I feel quite hopeless here, I want my magic numbers, I want at least to get my ph back up to 8.3 but if I do that my alk will go back up even higher I worry and its already pretty damn high IMO.
 
Adding anything to fix your ph is not good imo unless it is that drastic. I would let your ph sit at 8.0 for now. My ph is consistenly 8.1 to 8.2.

If you wanted to, you could always have a nice size refugium or ensure your house has adequate oxygen as co2 will lower it.
 
A fan could possibly raise it if you are bringing in good oxygen. You would do better to have your air intake on your skimmer coming from the outside of your tank I would think. Unless you have a CO2 issue, I don't think you will run into having low ph. Just check it during the middle of the night and the afternoon and you can tell where it will be.

Is for the 120 reef that you started? If it is less then 6 months old, it will stabilize. Mine took around 6 months to 7 months for my ph to be above 7.8. I was worried also. I asked the chemist in the forum here about it. His response was stability is the key and the 7.7 to 7.8 wasn't bad and it would naturally go up unless I have a high abundance of co2 in your house.

What you can to test that is get a bubbler and get a glass of your salt water. Aerate it really good outside and if it raises quite a bit, then you have a low o2 level in your tank area. I never bothered with it and never had issues.
 
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