When do I stop dripping Kalk?

[Billdemart]

For those of you that don't know my PH and Alk have dropped pretty badly and after some suggestions I went down to Avarium last night (saw Ray there ), and got some Kalk to try and help my corals which aren't doing well.

I started dripping Kalk last night at midnight from my small aquadoser and it has probably dripped about half of the solution by 9:00 AM this morning.

Am I suppossed to stop now that my lights are on? Or do I let it keep dripping.

Im happy to say my PH is up to about 8.0-8.1 right now and climbing.

The problem is my Alk is still 2.0. Not sure what to do about that.

Thanks in advance,

Bill

[jorge]

The PH is still a bit low, so I would continue dripping. As for the alk, what is your calcium? They go hand in hand. Kalk is a balanced additive and it will increase alk and calcium together.

Jorge

[Billdemart]

My CA test is a pain. Gotta drop like 20 drops and mix after each one trying to tell for a color change but I think its been over 400 every time I've tested it.

[jorge]

For calcium of 400, a balanced alk is 2.9 meq/L if I remember correctly. You can raise alk with baking soda. Read this and this articles, lots of useful info.

Jorge

[Ray1214]

Jorge,

Dang good articles. This is one time I am so glad I took time to read them.

Bill,

Be careful , remember you don't want to try to get your levels to go to norm overnight. So resist the temptation to add a pound of buffer, or too much Kalk to get immediate results.. Not a good thing. Personally, since I went back to water changes every other week, any problems I may have had with alk and/ph and/or calcium disappeared. I have also switched to Kent's Reef Crystals. (BTW, I built a water changer with a 4 gal bucket and a powerhead that I use as a mixer in my sump. I just open a valve and I fill a 4 gal bucket in about 2 min, then shut the valve and the powerhead resumes to provide flow in my sump. Then I do the same thing with the "Clean"Water bucket. I have a powerhead that mixes the salt over night, then open the valve and pump the water into my sump. Then start all my pumps back up. I get a water change done now in about 5-10 minutes including cleanup.
All of this is with Mag 900's (extra powerheads that I repaired) some cheap tygon tubing from home depot, and two of those wye connectors with the valve to switch on them.
Ray

[cyberchef]

I use 2 32 gal Rubbermaid trash cans to do water changes. I drain directly out of the main display tank while pumping the new water directly into the sump and do a 30 Gal water change in about 5-10 minutes.

[Billdemart]

Well am I suppossed to continue dripping this thing? Its going to take about 24 hours to finish. Is that ok?

Do I keep it going tonight? Or give it a break.

I have a 10 gallon nano with a mid sized refugium on the back and I will have dripped one full Aquadoser full of Kalk mix by midnight.

All corals still looking like crap. Zoo's haven't opened yet in 3 days, and the hard corals are all turning white.

[cyberchef]

I would continue to drip it until it's empty. I use Kalk water for top off, with a float switch and it gets added 24/7.

[Billdemart]

cool thx

[MegaDeTH]

umm

it's a 10g

if corals are looking that bad, do a big water change, like down to the sand

[cyberchef]

I over looked the part about it being a 10 gal nano...

What are your other water parameters? What additives are you using? What is your salinity? What corals do you have and what is your lighting?

I have to agree with MegaDeth on this, either do a large water change or do 3-4 smaller ones (2-3 gallons) over a 3-4 day period. I'm guessing there is some other problem causing the down fall of the corals.

[Billdemart]

Alright here's the full story. Sorry I should have included this from the beginning...

10 Gallon nano, up and running for 3 or 4 months.

96 Watt Quad 50/50 Coralife Hood
2 Rio Powerheads 90 and 50
50 Watt Ebo Jagr Heater
20 lbs of live rock
10 lbs of live sand
Instant Ocean Salt
CPR aquafuge (just got that up, no lights or LS yet)

Livestock

Couple of hermit crabs
10 snails all different kinds
1 Percula Clown
1 VERY small zoo colony (5 polyps)
3 small sps frags
1 big zoo colony
1 medium sized zoo colony
1 small GSP colony
Emerald Crap

Water Parameters

Salinity - 1.024 Usually 1.023 but dripping this Kalk takes forever and is screwing up my evaporation topoff.
PH - 8.2 now (was below 7.8 when problems occurred)
Ammonia - 0
Nitrites - 0
Nitrates - under 10
Temp 79-80
Alkalinity - 2.0


Ok now back to the story... The tank has housed the small zoo colony the fish, the inverts, and a cleaner shrimp for a long time. Recently my cleaner shrimp died and my nitrates tested around 15 so I thought that was the problem. I did about a 20-30% water change to affect that. Unfortunately im a moron and haven't been testing PH and alk in a long time.

So when my new corals started looking like crap after the first day I realized that that was most likely the problem as the PH was terribly low as well as the alk.

I started using Kent Marine PH Buffer to get the PH back up and then started dripping Kalk.

Amazingly today some of the Zoos started opening though only about halfway if that but its a sign of progress. I just went and bought a bunch of distilled water and Im going to do a massive water change tonight.

I will let you know how it goes, any advice is appreciated. Thanks,

Bill

[Schwaggs]

Originally posted by Billdemart
... and the hard corals are all turning white.

Sounds like a bleaching event. What is the highest temp your tank has seen in the last several weeks?

[Billdemart]

I just got them Sunday. One is a pink acro i think and it looks like its peeling.

The tank temp has never gone over 81 degrees. I keep the room air conditioned at 70 degrees 24/7.

I just did a MASSIVE water change. What a pain but I got it done. I changed out all but a few inches of water. Everything looks ok for the time being. I am going to recheck all the water parameters soon and see how everything is going.

[MegaDeTH]

pealing sometimes called RTN is very bad, make sure the frags are no where near each other.

The parts that peeled are totally dead