Alk issue with sps

[ptreef]

Tested my water today after noticing most of my corals, especially sps are retracting a great deal. Alkalinity seemed way off at about 12. Is this enough to cause that or should I look for another reason?

It happened after did a water change after using flatworm exit. It was the second dose of flatworm exit to hopefully kill off stragglers from the first round. I didn't find many worms to suck up but I still did about a 25-30% water change after. Just did another 10% today after the alk issue came up

 

[bcavalli]

What was you Alk level at before the water change? If you accidentally raise it too quickly sometimes it's better to bring it back down slowly. Generally, the rule if thumb is you want to avoid swings of 1.4 dKH in a 24 hr period.

 

[ptreef]

Unfortunately I don't know what the levels were at before. During my water change today I noticed that one or more of the doser tubes were in the sump water as it was raised. I noticed that some of the supplements were going into the water. Could this happen enough to cause a big increase?

 

[ptreef]

Before this happened, the doser has been running at the same levels since the tank was set up. Everything looked happy

 

[bcavalli]

How big is your tank. Sorry, I should asked that before. Lol unless your running a small tank I don't think that would make much of a difference. When I first fired up my Doser a while back I kept the tubes too low and when my sump level changed the tubes would get submerged and the Alk hardened and actually stopped dosing for a day until I noticed my pH levels dropping to low at night.

 

[ptreef]

100 gallon with 30 sump

 

[bcavalli]

I would just let it drop naturally and test the next couple of days until you drop it back down to where you want to keep it at. Then you can also adjust your dosing back down to match your usage. You might also want to check your calcium levels since they should match your Alk. If Alk is high, Calcium probably is as well.

 

[bcavalli]

I meant to mention, with dosing you have to stay on top of testing. Your usage will go up and sometimes down over time.

 

[ptreef]

Thanks I really hope that was the issue. My tank is not looking very good right now and if they didn't make it, devastating would be an understatement

 

[bcavalli]

PTreef;1049808 wrote: Thanks I really hope that was the issue. My tank is not looking very good right now and if they didn't make it, devastating would be an understatement

Your welcome. Have you had a chance to check all of your parameters? Salinity, Nitrates, ammonia, calcium and Magnesium?

 

[ptreef]

Salinity is 1.025. I'm not sure about ammonia, nitrite/ate, phosphate, but calcium was a little high (480) and mag was 1240

 

[bcavalli]

I would just stop dosing for a few days and test at the same time every day. Then adjust your dosing based on your usage. It's not terribly off just a little high in Alk and Calcium. You know your tank better than anyone and know when something is off. Good catch! You might want to check phosphates next. Do you run GFO or phosguard?

 

[ghbrewer]

All good advice! Here's to keeping a level head and using a common sense approach!:cheers: