KH/Alkalinity is Off the Charts

[Bemmer]

Well, some of you may have read that I set up my calcium reactor a while ago. What a pain. I am obviously still trying to twik it. But my fault for not doing daily water tests. Anyway, I did an alkalinity test with my Saliferts kit and the reading was off the chart. In other words, I drained the small syringe of the test chemical before the water turned pink. It stayed blue in the test tube the whole time. I did the test twice. I guess that means my KH reading is over 16 dKH and my alkalinity is over 5.71 meq/L. So, what does that mean. Should I turn off the CO2 tank? Everything in the tank appears to be okay.

Any thoughts on this???

BTW, my calcium is still only at 360ppm

 

[mg426]

Can you turn off the Reactor? Mabe let your alk fall on its own in a few days. Boost your ca back to 425 or so w/ca chloride. Then try running the reactor again. Not really sure why the alk would be so out of whack?

 

[funman1]

What is your PH?
It sounds like you are adding a PH boster of some kind.
~Steve~

 

[Bemmer]

I am adding Kalkwasser with a Kalk reactor. It runs about five hours at night. Do you think I should shut it off too? I am getting a reading of only 8.06 pH.

 

[Paintbug]

have you checked you magnesium?

 

[Bemmer]

Not recently. What should I expect to see.... Why do you ask?

 

[Billybeau1]

Bemmer, After you exhaust the sryinge, fill it up to the 1 ml mark again and dispense until you color turns. Then add the two values together.

As was said, I would shut the reactor off and let the alk fall. Bump your calcium up with calcium chloride.

Also check out this handy reactor setup calculator.
http://home.comcast.net/~jdieck1/reactor.html

 

[MCary]

back off your effluent drip maybe

 

[Paintbug]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8232788#post8232788 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Bemmer
Not recently. What should I expect to see.... Why do you ask?

your mag should be 1250-1350ppm. reason i ask is if you have added enough kalk to raise the alkalinity that high your calcium should have gone up with it. since its low, thats usually a sign the mag is low, and allowing the calcium and carbonate to become calcium carbonate and precipitate out the calcium, causing a low calcium level. make since?