Dosing Alk only?

[rk4435]

Is that normal? I've tested my parameters almost daily for seven weeks and my tank uses a lot of Alk and very little Calcium between water changes.

I'm serting up a doser when it arrives this week and my initial plan is to dose Alk only and manually dose Calcium on the rare occassion that I need it between water changes, which is not very often.

This seems unusual to me because I read a lot about people dosing two part products.

 

[genesis]

That does seem a bit off. A lot of tanks will use Alk at a higher rate than Ca but you still should be seeing some levels deplete

 

[rk4435]

I do see some, my Calcium will drop all the way down to 430 from 450 between WC, but my Alk depletion is about .30 - .40 ppm per day. I'm currently doing WC every ten days and I try to keep my Alk around 9, it will be close to 6 with no dosing.

 

[ghbrewer]

What's your Magnesium levels look like?

 

[tonymission]

I'm not sure the best way to describe this, but alk and ca don't scale relationally. Meaning just because you dose 40ml of alk and 40ml ca, they won't increase the same amounts depending on the ratio of the two numbers.
This is why I don't even test for Ca anymore... just test ALK, make sure that's in line and the Ca will always follow ALK properly.

 

[skriz]

Have you tried the peanut butter test?

 

[rk4435]

My Mag barely drops at all between WC ghbrewer. I went through a nightmare around Christmas thinking I had a Mag problem, that turned out to be a bad Salifert test. I've been mid 1300s since I got a new kit. I've been dosing a lot of Alk every day or two to get it up and maintain around 9 and recording the data. I'm only doing the Mag and Calcium checks weekly. I will say that since I started dosing Alk regularly my corals look great and I've seen something that I didn't see before, growth.

I'm clueless how I will convert my manual dosing into an actual doser, that will lead to several more weeks of almost daily Alk testing but it will be well worth it.

 

[rk4435]

Thanks Tony, what you said makes sense. With the higher Alk levels I've rarely had Calcium drop to 425 so it seems as if I may be able to just dose Alk and see how it goes.

I'm not sure what the peanut butter test is Skriz. Can that be explained in a family forum?

 

[tonymission]

Skriz;1017138 wrote: Have you tried the peanut butter test?

Yeah but my dog hates it.

 

[rk4435]

Tonymission went there.

 

[tonymission]

rk4435;1017150 wrote: Tonymission went there.

I think that will be etched on my cremation urn.

 

[skriz]

rk4435;1017150 wrote: Tonymission went there.

Lol! Yes he did. It's great when everything works out so seamlessly!

 

[dawgface]

tonymission;1017146 wrote: Yeah but my dog hates it.

Get a new dog!