help me understand this "carbon" thing

[greenmachine]

Ok so over the past few months I have been having a hard time keeping my ALK. up around 10DKH where I like it. After reading and reading here it seems that algae will use "carbonate" when there is not enough "co2" in the water. Is it ok to just dose more and more (baked baking soda)(randys 2-part) in my case to the system?? Is this why my algae growth has slowed over the years? My DKH is around 6 all the time now.. Does the algae slow down when DKH is low? Would a powerhead at the waters surface help?

[SantaMonica]

Dosing baking soda is probably easiest. Yes growth will slow without carbon. Powerhead might help, but not much.

[kotlec]

greenmachine

You are not alone . Many tanks have this small problem. Bigger tank - smaller problem. But for nanos this is really noticeable. You just need to dose more alk. And do it more often. It is not OK to do it once a week or so. I solved this only after I bought dosing pump and alk and cal is dosed 6 times per days in small amounts. Now alk is where I want and corals are thanking me every time I go near my tank. :)

[kerry]

In my 40G I dose 1/2 to 1 gallon a day of Kalk. Usually its 1/2 gallon but about once a week it gets a full gallon. My new 150G only gets 1 gallon dosed ever 3-4 days. My nano's don't seem to have such a problem, all I do with those is just maintain the water level with Kalk. I am thinking about getting a dosing pump for the 40G because its getting crazy!!

[Garf]

In a nutshell - http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-10/rhf/index.php

[RkyRickstr]

Wow.. i cant believe i rwad that whole article. This makes me wonder if it would be a good idea to pump co2 into the scrubber chamber and then have it go through crushed coral to raise ph again. Anyone thought of this?

[SantaMonica]

Crushed coral won't "raise" the pH. Although the low pH of the CO2 would dissolve the coral like a calcium reactor.

If you just let your algae operate normally, it will handle the pH for you.