After some much needed water testing

tank looks good. get your alk. up & your phos. down , it should recover nicely

 

I had a similar problem with my tank. The sps and lps started soaking in the carbonate. So, I had to start dosing. I found that the "max" dose they recommended was not enough. If you are adding by the cap, I would break it up into a couple times a day. Morning, home from work, before bed. Lets you add a bit more then they recommend because the corals use it I. Between and helps get your tank back in Alk without giant swings.

Dosing really helped my sps and lps with growth and color.

 

Woah woah woah. I strongly suggest not following Pete H. advice about dosing (no offense Pete H.)

DO NOT overdose ALK. GO SLOW. You will burn corals in a day by overdosing ALK.

It is really hard to be patient and follow the recommended dosing schedule. Especially with Alk as low as yours you will naturally want to get it up in a hurry....and it could take a few weeks to get it up to 180.

The key is to figure out how much ALK your tank uses and then dose that amount. That way it can remain somewhat stable and you won't have to deal with supplementing ALK (as much)

 

Other than that your CA is too high. You may like it like that but it is too high. Especially with your ALK so low. Finally, you need to check Magnesium too. If your mg is out of whack it won't matter if you have your ca and alk dialed in because they don't work without the right amount of mag.

Your phosphates are way too high obviously. I personally run GFO 24/7 and get a zero reading most of the time.

Don't worry about your ph. It swings night and day and somewhat with temp.

 

Lol. No offense taken. I think I should have clarified a bit more what I meant. I did not mean to over dose the tank to get the Alk up real fast. What I was trying to say is:

1. Dosing a few times in the day (smaller amounts) will help to keep the Alk more stable as you slowly raise it.

2. By adding more, I was only talking about a tiny bit more. When I noticed my Alk was starting to drop, I started to add the recommended amount from the bottle, never going over the max that the bottle said. Since I did not have a dosing pump, I was adding it by hand. However, when I would test my Alk, it was still decreasing (much slower mind you but still decreasing). So, I started spacing partial doses out over the day and watching the Alk after each dose, both before and a bit after. What I noticed was a slight drop from one dose to the next. So, when I did those small doses throughout the day, I was able to compensate for that just slightly. This allowed me to raise my Alk from 5.5 dkH to 9 over 2 weeks. When i first noticed the problem in my tank, I was at 6.5 dkh. i did a big water change to get to 7 and started dosing. Nothing fast but when following the directions on the bottle, I slowly fell to 5.5 dkH over time. So, I tried to find a way to slowly improve the Alk without going fast and keeping it more stable as if you were dosing all day. I never raised the Alk by more than 0.25 dkH in one day.

Hope that makes a bit more sense. I totally agree with Potroast, don't go fast. I think a lot of people see low Alk and jump it back to like 9 and burn everything. That was not what I was intending to advise.

 

Pete H. I totally get what you are saying. Looks like you developed a methodical and safe plan to get ALK up.

I didn't want anyone to get the wrong idea. I have overdosed myself and lost corals and it sucks.....

 

Yeah, I read through my first post and I totally did not explain well at all. MY BAD! Thanks for jumping in to make sure it was clarified. I would have felt bad if it had messed up Kyle or someone else's tank.

 

Good luck! I am sure you will have it under control in no time. /DesktopModules/ActiveForums/themes/_default//emoticons/smile.gif

 

Nice IP cam. looking good.

 

How often are you doing water changes? That might help with the all as well .

 

When you boost your alk your ca will go down a bit btw, so monitor them both every 3rd day for the duration of your dosing period to boost it up, will probably take two weeks. Then figure out what kind of dose you need to use to maintain, monitor every third day for two weeks while dialing in. Then use that formula for your two part dosing system going forward and adjust annually (depending on coral growth/additions). There used to be a really good online calculator for this, I'll see if I can track that down for you. It only gives you a starting point as you can guess biodemand varys HUGELY from one persons tank to the next.

How did you let your phosphate get that high? Just not change gfo? That's ok, I nearly alk burnt my tank lately, caught it in the nik of time dkh 12.5! Did a water change to help. Typical probs with the Ca rxr goddamn solenoid got stuck open. I'll have to buy a new one I guess. Good luck man!

 

Remember Kyle that there is a point where the GFO stops pulling Phosphates out of the water. When you buy most GFOs they give you guidance on how much you should add. If you use BRS calculator, I think they recommend half of the starting dose when you start to use the product and then increase over time. As soon as you bottom out on your numbers and start to swing in the other direction, you then replace it with more GFO than you previously used.

In my 90 gallon I am currently tumbling 12 tablespoons. I had went up to more than that, but found that I only needed to replace it every 6-7 weeks. I like replacing it when I do my regular maintenance, so I went down to 12 tablespoons and replace it every 4 weeks. I know in the past, the winter months I needed more than in the summer because I have to top off the tank more with water.

You will still see coral growth with high phosphates, but you will not see as strong of coral skeletons. I can take the same SPS in two different tanks, one with high phosphate and one with no measurable phosphate and when I go to frag them tell a difference in the two corals. One is almost impossible to cut with bone cutters and the other is fragile/weak.

 

Yah this is not the formation of calcite as in the case of high alk applications but rather a lattice structure that includes PO4 due to the fact that it's partial negative charge has a high affinity for the enzyme carbonic anhydrase which is responsible for matrix formation. Essentially where phosphates are present, the partial negative charge of PO4 is substituted for CO3.

 

Good info guys. I started with 3 tablespoons of GFO 2 weeks ago and am gonna increase it tonight. How much should I go up to in a 90?