Mysterious white stuff? Please help me

[ouling]

Ok I'm not a patient guy. At the meeting I won the calcium Gluconate and a frag. I just dosed the entire bottle of the thing into the tank in 12 hours (380ppm, 90g of water)... Yes, Calcium Gluconate, Calcium hit with Gluconic acid into a mixture, and all 12 oz of it.
I can understand why my pH is a bit low because of the gluconic acid, and also why calcium is lower than before. But here is the thing. The fine white powder that has settled after 1 day of cloudyness, is sticking to the slime of some of my corals and powerheads, IS THAT CALCIUM CARBONATE, OR MAGNESIUM CARBONATE OR MAGNESIUM HYDROXIDE? Maybe both? My alk is at 13.5Dkh and calcium is barely pushing 360ppm. So i'm thinking with all the extra calcium in the solution, assuming they're not calcium carbonate, should be enough to move the calcium to 450ppm; unless the magnesium is very low. I'm waiting for my magnesium kit in the mail so no way to test it out.

And I've just done a water change today.

can someone please share their thoughts?

Very good advice gets a prize of frag or $10 cash, or any food you want at the next meeting.

 

[xyzpdq0121]

Sounds to me like you just created a bit of a calcium snow storm in your tank. The calcium prob never made it into solution before turning into a white cloud and percipitating to the bottom. Did you dilute the calcium gluconate in fresh water before adding it? Now I am not a chemestry person so I am not the person to ask here but I would say it is pretty bad stuff. The only thing I have read about the subject says you need to make sure the "snow" has not setteled on your corals and try to slowly stir it up into the water with extra flow aimed at the sand bed and rocks. As a side note: Calcium Gluconate is not a good product to use to raise your USABLE CA levels. Only mahjor advantage to Gluconate is for Corraline Algae growth.

 

[ouling]

The thing is that it didn't snow storm out when i added it. and i did it very slowly over a extremely high flow powerhead. But it started to cloud up 1 hour after i added it. The white stuff is on a few of my corals but i think they can shed that off and fend for themselves, if not then they deserve to die. I do think it is a snow storm because my alk is 1.5 dkh lower than before. Should I run the coral under a pump to get the powder off?

 

[xyzpdq0121]

So your dKH was at 15?!? I was reading your original post as no drop in alk because I could not believe that you have that high amount in your tank to begin with.

If it were me, and I had to wait till the chemestry pros woke up in the morning. I would increase the flow in the tank and remove what I could from the corals. I think very few corals are naturally adapt to shed off what you are asking them to... I doubt this happens very much in the wild!

Last piece of friendly advice is to not add a whole bottle of CA to your system at once!

P.S> your might see an increase in CA levels but it will be kind of "false" readings... Again the CA you added is more for algae growth then gor coral growth. It will read higher levels when in solution longer because it is not being utilized by corals. So your useable CA that is good for your corals might still be low! Next time go for Powdered/soluble Calcium or Calcium Chloride (calcium Chloride is mainly for short term use to boost CA numbers!)

 

[ouling]

Yea Brandon i know. I ordered the Reef Advantage calcium powder because it has Mg and Sr. I hope foster and smith gets here monday. Between now and then my corals are in the hands of god. Another water change tomorrow, and going to blast them under the return pump for now.

 

[ouling]

<span style="font-family: Arial;">I'm pretty sure that Polygluconate is calcium bonded with organic acids and other carbons to form this additive... It is not ionic and does not create free floating Ca++ ions in water readily (thats why it does not need to be shaken). I believe the organic acid must be broken apart before the Ca ion is released. Thus the low pH is caused by Gluconic acid neutralizing with the OH- ions. This process probably takes 10-40 minutes and Calcium is released gradually, thats why I did not see the F'ing snow storm immediately and was fool into pouring half of the thing in, and another half later.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial;">According to what I've learned during my life in Chem; this is what Calcium Gluconate should look like: C12H22CaO14, <u>but i don't know what polygluconate is, and what exactly is in the poly part</u>. Probably a complex organic molecule with calcium somewhere in the formula.</span>

but if Polygluconate looks anything like Calcium Gluconate then please D<span style="font-family: Arial;">o Not use SeaChem Reef Calcium, here is why:</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial;">If you look at the molecule I've wrote out above, this is a heavily organic molecule higly resembling sucrose, sucrose just have a ending with O11 instead of O14. </span>
<span style="font-family: Arial;">To get really technical and to benifit the reader. Sucrose is actually is glucose and fructose bonded together. We all know fructose is fruit sugar; glucose is a simple sugar used in animal-an important carbohydrate. It's like adding neutrients into your tank and not raising nitrate directly, this does benifit bacterial becaues it is their food, so if you want to raise the bacterial level in your tank, then add this stuff in (or just add sugar).</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial;">With this said, I'm now starting to doubt that the calcium in Reef Calcium can ever be released into the water in it's ionic form within reasonable time span because sugar breaks down slowly (if it looks like calcium gluconate). Sucrose is a very weak bond, and form even weaker bonds with other things, but it is still not easily broken in the condition of the reef tank, unless your chiller fail and temp get over 150f.</span>
<span style="font-family: Arial;">It is in medicine because when humans eat it, it is absorbed into cells directly, (i'm not sure) but this isn't the case with photosysthesis. </span>

<span style="font-family: Arial;">I've heard some things that glucose is used by plants heavily because of photosysthesis, but I don't think hard corals can use them unless it's directly fed to their mouths. Also, I doubt this kind of modified organic calcium molecule could be used by corals because their limited ability of absorb neutrients throughout their cell membrane, also it is probably too large of a molecule for the coral to use through photosysthesis because it's masked by other organics, so the coral may not even think it's calcium. </span>

<span style="font-family: Arial;">I didn't read the label before i put it in, the yellowish thickness got me suspicious, but I won this in the raffle so i thought what the heck.</span>

 

[ouling]

Ok its gone and taken care of. But I wonder why people will talk about whale sharks all day and other non-reef-related things and not post anything that is actually reef technical?

 

[kappaknight]

Maybe it's just me... but I don't think they sell anything in this hobby that you're supposed to use up in just one day. I really can't think of one.

 

[ouling]

Salt

 

[FutureInterest]

Yah I wouldn't dump a whole bottle of some additive in my tank either. I'm wierd like that .

 

[dakota]

I'm pretty sure that you'll be fine. I haven't read of any tanks crashing from calcium precipitation events or that it is lethal to corals. Hopefully I'm not wrong here.

You might want to keep an eye on your pumps and powerheads to make sure they aren't seizing up from calcium precipitaing in them. The heat in the pump will speed up the reaction and cause precipitation in the body of the pump that might build up over time.

Keep up with the waterchanges to get rid of that gluconate and sharpen your coralline algae scraper. Your coralline is probably in Hogheaven right about now.

 

[cameron]

None of the "storms" will have any long term effect on the tank other than possibly jamming up some pumps or clogging some lines. You might calcify some of your sand, but it will work itself out. I would switch to a balanced additive and stick with it or switch to two-part and test often until you get the dosages consistent.

 

[ouling]

yea it clogged my Terminator II