Keeping Alk steady with SPS

RynosReef

New member
I've been noticing something strange with my alk dosing. For a while I've manually dosing my alk using brightwells reef code a and b. For the longest time I've only needed to dose about 30ml a day. My alk before dosing would be 8 and about 8.7 after dosing. I usually dosed in one shot after lights out. Corals all grew fine.

Now to the strange part: I decided to try to split up the dosing to make it a little more stable throughout the day. So I dosed 15ml after lights out and 15ml again 12 hrs later. I wanted to bump up my alk to 9. So I started dosing 15ml before work, 15ml after work, and 15ml before bed. To my surprise, even after reaching 9, my testing shows that the alk needed to be dosed 3 times a day at 45ml to maintain my alk. I tried going back to the 30ml dosage split up and my alk started dropping. Now it's more stable at 9 to 9.2 max after dosing. So basically I decided to bump up my alk and the tank took it in. My corals seem to be growing a little faster now as well.

This is really making me want to invest in an auto-doser to see just how much stable alk will change the demand for alk in my tank. Any thoughts?

Does keeping more stable alk increase the demand for alk in stony corals?
 
i plan to get 3 brs dosers for alk and cal and mag . i want the leaste amount of manual work as poss. this will ensure a consistant dose everyday . plus its real easy to add or subtract from the dosage much more accurately . i use an apex controller so i can monitor my tanks peramiters and make adjustments to the doses from my phone . also USE kalkwasser . its a must for sps keepers . since ive started useing kalk i dose alot less . But as my corals grow i will need to increase my doses alittle each month depending on my tanks needs . witch lately has been mag. sofar thats been the hardest for me to keep stable .
 
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