Help, Alkalinity is still climbing.

BBReefkeeper · 01-01-2002, 09:48 PM

My Alkalinity is still climbing and I need help lowering it. I've done several searches but I'm still not certain what to do. I increased my effluent rate a few days ago, however Alk is still climbing. Do I increase CO2? Please help me tune my reactor. Here are my reedings.
Calcium dKH
12/14 335 11.2
12/16 360 12.8
12/21 370 13.3
12/27 370 14.7
1/1 390 16+
All tests are done with Salifert
Thanks
Bryan

sculpin · 01-01-2002, 10:35 PM

That's perfectly fine. Why are you worrying? Mine is usually 15-20 with a calcium of 450 to 500.

BBReefkeeper · 01-02-2002, 08:36 PM

Sculpin-
According to the calcium/alkalinity calculators, a calcium level of 450 should have a balanced alkalinity of 12.6. It may be ok to have a higher alk. but I would like to get it as close to balanced as possible. Can anyone tell me how to tune the reactor to acomplish this. More or less CO2, faster or slower efluent rate etc.
Thanks for any help.
Bryan

P.S. I have been adding Kent Turbo Calcium w/o any buffer to help bring the calcium levels up.

sculpin · 01-02-2002, 09:01 PM

More CO2 will bring your calcium up. I would do so cautiously though.

mojoreef · 01-02-2002, 10:13 PM

Ok BB slow down a bit. It seems like you are going a bit to fast. IMO Ca reactors are not the best to build up calcium as they are to maintain. I would slow down the effluent rate right away so we can walk through this. I need to know what your bubble rate is and what are the parameters on the effluent (PH, ALK, CA).Stop dosing the turbo calc for a sec to. Also need to know what your media is. and if its a dual or single chamber.

tuning in a ca reactor is finding out what the coral take out of your tank so you can replace it at the same rate. Besat thing for the moment is to stop all and lets work from scratch.

MIKe

vulkum · 01-03-2002, 10:17 AM

hey brian i had the same problem when i first set mine up. i kept cranking it up to raise the calcium and it never would go over 400. well i found out later that raising it with supplements is the easiest way then the reactor will maintain it for you. the effluant should be in this range
PH: 6.5-6.7
ALK:12-20 DKH
CAL: could be as high as 600+
they say to raise SLOWLY the alk over a 3-4 week period to the desired levels. then the calcium will follow suit and level out eventually. it takes a couple months before you really see any real results. i'm using seafloor grade carib sea right now and its been working ok. i have about 20lb of super calc gold if you want to try some of that. let me know and i can bring to the meeting.
hey the aggreacrete is doing pretty good starting to get some growth on it to mostly diatoms though so i bought a yellow eyed kole tang and hes keeping it cropped. i want to add about 25lbs of live rock to help seed it eventually, but hey its just a fish tank!
what type of reactor did you get give me a call
aaron