Ca Mg and Alk ok?

[joelespinoza]

I have never actually tested the Ca, Mg or Alk my tank since I ripped it apart and reset everything 4 months abo (TERRIBLE Dino outbreak) before that I did test it with some old no name kit I got from a friend that was probably out dated (it also seemed poorly translated from some asian language). I threw that out long ago figuring it would probably do more harm than good.

Today I got my new Salifert Ca Mg and Alk kits in and I wanted to make sure these numbers look ok, since I am pretty new to this. The only "dosing" I ever do is just putting some kalk and vinegar in the topoff water most of the time.

Ca = 550 ppm
Alk = 11.5 dKH
Mg = 1410

From what I have read none of these look wildly out of the range of normal, but as I said I am not used to dealing with this so I wanted to run it by you guys to make sure.

[Byron]

They look pretty good, Ca and MG are a tad high but it won't hurt the tank. I target my water to these-
Ca = 450 - 500
Alk= 8 - 12
MG = 1300
Cheers Ben

[Garf]

You guys really like keeping your calcium high. Don't you get precipitation on the heaters and in the pumps?

[Ace25]

Byron, an Alk in a range of 8-12? Going from 8 to 8.5 is what I would consider a large swing. Bouncing between 8-12 I would expect all the corals to be hurting.

My opinion for joelespinoza, Alk and CA are too high for my liking but not outside of acceptable levels, Mg is good though. 1350 is the middle ground for Mg so 1410 is good.

[kotlec]

Ace,

My corals for example seems dont care at all if alk rises to 12 or even 15. But whenever alk drops below 8, I imediatelly start noticing signs of unhappiness.
Cal 500 never makes any signs of depreciation either. That surprises me.
Mg floats in 1500 zone . I do nothing to maintain it there. This surprises me as well.

[Ace25]

If you have alk at 8 in a 100G system and try to raise it to 12 in one shot, that will pretty much guarantee the corals will be killed.

Again, it comes down to adaptation first then stability. If the corals were acclimated to Alk of 12 and they are thriving, that is fine, and dropping below 8 to quickly (within 2-3 months) can cause issues like you said because they can not adapt that quickly. If you have corals thriving at an alk of 12 and slooooowly let them adapt to an alk of 5, they will still thrive, but it could take 2-3 years for the corals to adapt to that so it would be a very slow process in human terms.

[Floyd R Turbo]

Ace check out the last couple posts on this thread
http://algaescrubber.net/forums/showthread.php?1801-Finally!-90g-scrubber-40sq-inches&p=19682#post19682

I think you could give some insight

[joelespinoza]

You guys really like keeping your calcium high. Don't you get precipitation on the heaters and in the pumps?

Heater....? You assume I HAVE a heater.... Well actually I have this http://www.walmart.com/ip/Tetra-Heater-1-ct/10291808. I originally got it for my 3 gallon tank.... Now I use it to heat 95 gallons of water!


But no I dont seem to have precipitation on anything.

[SantaMonica]

I've been experimenting with pouring the ca into the sump, without diluting it first. I already do that with the baking soda, and strontium.

[Garf]

Joelespinoza - with calcium and alkalinity on the high end, combined with no precipitation, sounds like your pH may be really low. Maybe worth rechecking this.

[kerry]

I've been experimenting with pouring the ca into the sump, without diluting it first. I already do that with the baking soda, and strontium.
I wanted to try putting straight vinegar and calcium hydroxide into a dosing pump but was not sure if it would work. Any thoughts on that? SM, do you have a cheap source for Str?

[SantaMonica]

Don't know.

I get Seachem str from md

[Floyd R Turbo]

Kerry, the only problem I see with that is that dripping that highly concentrated mixture directly into the saltwater could cause a small amount of localized precipitation, even if dripped into a high-flow area.

[joelespinoza]

Joelespinoza - with calcium and alkalinity on the high end, combined with no precipitation, sounds like your pH may be really low. Maybe worth rechecking this.


Its never less than 8.2 and never more than 8.5, it is currently between 8.2 and 8.3.

[Byron]

Hi Ace,
I didn't mean to imply "bouncing" around between 8 - 12 is OK in regards to Alk. I agree this would cause major problems for corals. I try to keep my tank around the 10 although i know other aquarist's quite happily keep there tank lower and higher than this range. I should a have been more specific in my reply, sorry for any confusion caused!
Cheers Ben

[kerry]

Kerry, the only problem I see with that is that dripping that highly concentrated mixture directly into the saltwater could cause a small amount of localized precipitation, even if dripped into a high-flow area.
I thought that might happen and end up putting white dust on everything.