Help with High Calcium Levels in my tank

[superclown]

I am baffled at this point a few months ago I was dosing my tanks with purple tech trying to get better coraline growth on some of my base rock. I really wasn't testing my calcium and I was dosing per instructions on bottle. I just felt like something wasn't right so I picked up a red sea calcium test kit from the fish gardens over in newnan.

I tested my tank's I found both to be equally at around 750-850 ppm. I called him up he suggested that it might be user error on my end and I should bring in some of my water for him to check for me.

So i did and his results with his kit were the same. This prompted him to check my alk because i was informed that my alk was probably in the toilet. I forget the exact numbers of what it was but he said it was borderline non acceptable.

Come to find out my oceanic salt comes right out the container with 450ppm calcium

I Was told best way to lower my calcium back down a bit was to of course pick up some more corals that are calcium user's in addition to doing a 30% water change on both tanks wait a few weeks then continue with weekly 10% changes to help slowly bring things back into specs.

I Have been doing this for the past few month's and I decided tonight i would check my calcium again. I Did it twice just to make sure and now my 12 gallon is around 500ppm but my 24g is still at around 700ppm

What confuses me about this is that all my corals in my 12 gallon are softies while in my 24g I have a lot more hard coral's such as birdsnest, sps, montipora, favia.....etc.etc...

I thought hard corals are what really eat up your calcium and not the softies or am i incorrect on this? I have also switched to instant ocean salt mix not the reef crystals. I thought the instant ocean didn't really have a lot of calcium in it. ....

can anyone tell me there thoughts on this

Thanks in advance

 

[jef4y]

When did you stop dosing purple tech? How many water changes & what % were they since then?

It's quite possible you drove it way up using the purple tech and it just hasn't come back down yet.

Stony corals and coraline will consume calcium, but the rate of consumption can be very low depending on how many corals you have and how much coraline. Additionally, if the MG/ALK aren't right, the corals may not absorb as much calcium as they normally would.

If you're not dosing in any other manner, I don't know that I'd rush out to switch salt brands. 450ppm is perfectly acceptable.

You have to remember that water changes are only diluting the problem, and it takes a LOT of dilution to really make a big difference. I would be leaning to you simply not having had enough water changes since.

If I were to recommend anything, I'd do 25-30% water changes WEEKLY until the ca comes back down. Even then you may be up for 6-8 water changes

 

[geno]

I've had a similar problem -- even using a CR. I don't have enough SPS corals to consume the CA I'm putting in the tank. As a result, the CA climbs and the KH goes down.

As stated, WC will take some time to offset your high CA and low KH. Of course, going slow is indeed the best approach. Drastic changes are seldom if ever recommended.

 

[jcook54]

I had the same issue when I was dosing Purple Up. My CA levels stayed in the 550 - 600 range for a long time after I quit using it. Water changes are the best solution but it will take a while. I found that keeping my Magnesium in the 1400 range helped as well. My Alk was typically around 8.0 the whole time and I didn't try to get it much higher because I was concerned about precipitation. If everything seems to be doing o.k. I wouldn't make any quick changes to try and fix it. My levels are acceptable now but it took a while.

Of course I don't have experience with Ca levels of 800+ but I know any time I try fixing a problem with anything other than water changes I usually create more problems.

 

[superclown]

I have not used purple tech in over 2 months 8 weeks i've.done 2 30% water changes and i've done about 8 10% water changes. I stopped using oceanic salt for one because i ran out and blue planet is the closest place to me but they are only open when im at work after they moved and changed there schedule it became impossible for me to get by there. I was also trying to drive down the calcium input.