Its not such a bad problem. With all three, your in balance. Being out of balance is harder to correct.
Lets just get you on the right track. I don't think its a "chemical" problem but more of how and when your dosing.
I am going to show you a straight forward way to keep your levels up. We need to get you on a program and show you this ONE way to do things. If you find afterward you do not want to continue doing this, or you want to swap out the supplies for other alternatives, fine. But lets try it this way first.
1. Lets keep it simple and straight forward and start with a water change. Sort of a clearing of the slate. Most reef salts will give you what you need out of the bag.
2. When setting up a tank I use a buffer like Proper Ph 8.2 and Kents Liquid Calcium to "set" the levels. Why? These products are concentrated and a little dab will do ya. They are good for resetting your tank from really low conditions, but not good for daily useage (though can be done, but not recomended. Why, because they are concentrated and overdoses or not dosing for fear of occurs frequently) Once you get your Alk and Ca around 10dkh and 450ppm, put them in the closet and forget about them.
If your already there, skip using these products and go from there.
3. I assume we are dosing by hand. Following this method I used for a year, you will achieve rock solid params. In fact, my doser causes me more problems than doing it this way.
A. Everyday, fill up your water level and wait a few minutes.
B. Given your optimum params of 10dkh for ALK and 450ppm for CA, test your levels with a QUALITY test kit. (Salifert or Elos)
C. Based on your testing results and using a two-part system such as B-ionic, dose per recommended on the bottles.
D. Keep testing and dosing over the course of a few hours until you achieve your levels. Take note of the total volume you added today.
E. Everyday, add your topoff water, test your alk, add your supplement volume. If you find your alk and CA "creeping" to higher values, decrease your daily doseages. If you find they are getting lower, increase the daily doseage. Out of balance creeping can be achieved the same way, just add more or less of only one of the products.
As your tank grows coraline algae, you add a clams, or SPS the daily uptake will increase due to increase calcification.
This is the EASIEST way to keep your system in balance and your levels up.
There are other methods or alternatives such as CA reactors, Kalkwasser drips, Baking Soda and what not, but lets keep it simple and try this method. If you find you don't like it, switch later on......but try it my way first.
Side note:
If you notice, I said to test only your Alk daily when dosing. Because of the resolution of Ca tests, it is difficult to see the daily uptake by the system. Because of this, it can give you the false idea that you don't need to add CA. This is incorrect. To get a better idea of the CA useage trend, test weekly or monthly. If you are using the 2-part as described, the odds of being out of balance are small, and in an event you are, you won't be by much.
