Raising Alkalinity w/ BRS 2 part

Tonynlo

New member
Issue:
Coral was looking a bit sad :worried:. Turns out, I had a bad test kit. Borrowed a friends kit and tested alk last night, the level was at 6.1. I'm a routine water changer (12%-13% per week [22gallon brute]) plus top off with kalk. I have 180 gallons of volume and only enough coral to stock a 40 IMO. I cant believe how low it dropped. I use reef crystals.

Plan:
I plan to bring the alk up about 1 dKH per day. My dosing pump is 1.1ml/hr (i've tested it to be accurate as well) so in order to hit the 600ml mark I would need about 545 minutes of dripping. What I plan to do is run my dosing pump for 2 hours a night @ 30 minute intervals with an hour break in between. After the 5th night, I hope be back on par.

Question
Being new to this situation, I'm not sure if this will work or if any other parameters will be thrown our of wack. Does this plan appear to be thought out enough? Is anything going to happen to mg while doing this? What type of issues should I look for?

I'll be testing my water at about 7AM and 7PM daily until stable.
 
Calcium was 480 last night. Ph alarm didn't go off so I'm assuming it's been stable but I'll verify when I get home. The probe is only 3 weeks old. No mg test, but have one on the way.
 
Don't waste your money. I bought a 5 lb. bag of Arm & Hammer baking soda at Sam's club and I use that to raise my alkalinity. B-Ionic and BRS use sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), it's the same thing. I dose it directly into my filter sock.
 
Don't waste your money. I bought a 5 lb. bag of Arm & Hammer baking soda at Sam's club and I use that to raise my alkalinity. B-Ionic and BRS use sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), it's the same thing. I dose it directly into my filter sock.

I do the same thing. I buy the Ca part from BRS, but bake arm & hammer for 90 minutes at 400 to make my Kh part. I also dose near the filter sock in my sump. I don't dose right into it though (that's where I dose kalkwasser).

Personally, I would raise it by 1 dKH to get it back to 7.0, but would only raise by 0.5 dKH/day after that.
 
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Baked baking soda also dissolves in RODI more easily.

It's the "recipe 1" method for making the alkalinity part in 2 part. "Recipe 2" uses regular baking soda. Recipe 1 is better for tanks that have normal to low pH, and that don't also dose kalkwasser. Recipe 2 is suposed to be good for tanks that have high pH and that use kalkwasser.


This is a good read for 2 part.

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-02/rhf/index.php
 
Tony,i run a kAlk reactor all night for 2:45 every hour plus bionic and mine is still low.i think its the rreef crystals.i use the seachem alk buffer works great and won't raise ph.
 
I've had BRS dosing pumps and a ton of 2 part for a while and have never used them. Kalk has always been enough. The only new additions are 3 tiny Chromis a few replacement snails and 7 ricordeas. I wish I had caught this a little sooner.

dkh is 7.0 tonight. Slowed my pumps to 20 min intervals in hoped of raising no more than .6 or .7 tomorrow. My mg test won't be here for a few days, so I'll be taking some water up to the store for test.
 
alk can be sneaky like that. i've had my biggest losses with sudden swings. one of the few things i try and test for on a regular basis. it's also the one i tend to forget the most.
 
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