Damn! Have you been dosing it at all? It should be around 1320-1350.
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Alkalinity help
- Thread starter charles-n-charge
- Start date
Haven't been dosing whatsoever. I'm not sure why all of my levels are so high
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Reload the syringe and keep going with it. Add the second value to the first and you'll have the mg level.
Your salinity is probably through the roof. If you are using a hydrometer, seriously consider a refratometer. If you already have one, check the calibration against one that is known to be right.
That is very strange. How often are you topping off and doing wc's? Are you mixing your own or buying from the lfs?
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A few things:
1. As stated, as long as you have live rock in your tank, your KH will never be 0.
2. Why not find out what your Mg levels are? Just dilute your sample with some RO or distilled water. Or water with a low, known concentration of Mg. Just make up for your dilution with math.
3. Just because your Mg is over 1500 it may not be a cause for concern. When fighting Bryopsis outbreaks people often boost their Mg to about 1700ppm. Still, I'd make sure your levels are acceptable and try to get them to the normal range. MY coworker often reported that his SPS were bleaching when he was dosing a lot of alkalinity buffers on a daily basis. I'd back off for a bit. He fixed the problem with a media reactor. However, that doesn't explain the Mg because only C Balance part "A" contains Mg.
1. As stated, as long as you have live rock in your tank, your KH will never be 0.
2. Why not find out what your Mg levels are? Just dilute your sample with some RO or distilled water. Or water with a low, known concentration of Mg. Just make up for your dilution with math.
3. Just because your Mg is over 1500 it may not be a cause for concern. When fighting Bryopsis outbreaks people often boost their Mg to about 1700ppm. Still, I'd make sure your levels are acceptable and try to get them to the normal range. MY coworker often reported that his SPS were bleaching when he was dosing a lot of alkalinity buffers on a daily basis. I'd back off for a bit. He fixed the problem with a media reactor. However, that doesn't explain the Mg because only C Balance part "A" contains Mg.
I'm assuming that the problem is that I use Reef Crystals, which have ca, kh, and mg already in it, and that I don't really do water changes as much as I should.
With the system being as big as it is, and not having many fish, my ammonia, nitrates, nitrites, etc. all stayed at 0 no matter what, so I never saw the need to do water changes. Yet I'd still top off with Reef Crystals whenever the salinity in the system dropped, and top off with r/o water whenever it evaporated. Which I'm assuming means that all the ca, kh, and mg stayed in the system, and I just kept adding more on top of it without removing any through water changes.
That's just the theory I've thought of though.
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With the system being as big as it is, and not having many fish, my ammonia, nitrates, nitrites, etc. all stayed at 0 no matter what, so I never saw the need to do water changes. Yet I'd still top off with Reef Crystals whenever the salinity in the system dropped, and top off with r/o water whenever it evaporated. Which I'm assuming means that all the ca, kh, and mg stayed in the system, and I just kept adding more on top of it without removing any through water changes.
That's just the theory I've thought of though.
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So how often do you do water changes? What do you keep your salinity at? Reef Crystals is a decent salt, so if your RO really is pure then idk where the Mg is coming from.
Your SPS may be starved for a trace element or micronutrient. That is a big reason why people do water changes on reefs, even when everything looks good. You should never wait until it becomes a state of emergency. Certain ions (e.g. iodide) have a relatively short half-life in the aquarium and need to be replenished more often.
Do you dose any supplements for various trace elements?
Your SPS may be starved for a trace element or micronutrient. That is a big reason why people do water changes on reefs, even when everything looks good. You should never wait until it becomes a state of emergency. Certain ions (e.g. iodide) have a relatively short half-life in the aquarium and need to be replenished more often.
Do you dose any supplements for various trace elements?
It's honestly been a few months since I did a real water change. And I haven't supplemented anything really as far as trace elements go.
My salinity is around 1.023-1.024
I'm pretty new to reefing. I've done some simple softies in the past, but this is the first time I've gotten into anything serious. I've just been doing fish-only systems this whole time.
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How big is your tank and what's the filtration like? Have you lost any corals? Even though you're showing no nitrates, you should still continue with water changes? Sps corals are extremely sensitive so there could be something else you're missing such as certain trace elements that there's no test kits for. I do 2 wc's a week on my mixed reef biocube even though all params appear perfect just to replenish any elements that have been used up.
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The water volume of the entire system is roughly 400 gallons.
Soft corals are doing fine, but I'm seeing little to no growth. Hard corals have all died, or are in the process of dying.
My reason for not doing water changes is mostly because doing such large changes is extremely hard with such a large system. I have a 40 gallon container for holding RO water for top offs, but no container for holding/mixing salt water.
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