High Alk

I had an equipment malfunction overnight. As a result, my alkalinity doser kept dosing. Normally I keep alk at about 9.0. With the additional dosing, the alk went from around 9.0 up to 14.7.


I've turned off the doser as well as my ATO (kalkwasser). I've calculated that with no additional dosing and no kalkwasser, that my alk should drop from 14.7 to about 11.6 in 24 hrs. Then it could be dropped back to 9.0 in another 24 hrs.


I don't have enough salt water mixed up to do a massive change, and then again my holding tank for saltwater is only about 15 gallons. My tank is 75 gallon, so that would only be about a 20% change.


Suggestions???


Am I likely to have a big fallout from a sharp 1 day rise and 1-2 day drop??


Recommendations??

 

Surprisingly, my ph only rose to 8.4

 

So I turned off the ATO (kalkwasser - max saturation) and turned off the alk dosing. I increased the calcium dosing (tripled it - to make up for no calcium from the kalkwasser, and because the lower calcium reading).


Readings at 5pm


Alk: Dropped from 14.7 to 11.65


Calcium: Dropped from 410 to 395


The alk drop was much faster than I expected. I expected that drop over 24 hours, not 8 hours. Also I did not expect the calcium to drop either. So, I'm guessing that the higher alk, caused the corals to consume the calcium faster than previous.


I've got 15 gallons of make-up water (reef crystals), but I just tested that and the alk reading on the makeup water is 11.5. So, no help there.


PH has dropped from 8.4 this morning (9 am) to 8.13 (5 pm)


Nothing bad happening in the tank at the moment. I've got my fingers crossed....


I'm going to do additional readings at 9pm. I think that at dkh of 11, I should start back the ATO, and go for a slower drop of alk from 11 to 9.


Thanks everyone for your input and offers of help. They were greatly appreciated. Hopefully I won't have to report in a couple days of corals dying!!

 

Oh - and I did the alk tests twice each time, to make sure that my results were repeatable, and wasn't something funky I did with the test. Using Salifert test kits for calcium & alk.

 

Alk is down. Both kalkwasser & dosing running again. So far so good. Nothing has died.


Problem has been resolved. Problem occured when I switched out my Reefkeeper Lite controller to the Reefkeeper Elite. I set the Reefkeeper Elite up identical to my Reefkeeper Lite set-up. I kept all equipment on the same channels. Should work identical - right???? It didn't. I did a google search and that led me to a problem report and the user guide for the PC4 power bar. On the PC4, the 1st and 4th channels are 'relay channels' and the 2nd and 3rd channels are 'solid state'. Whatever that means.... Something about that even when the power is turned off to those channels, a small amt of current remains. Anyway my dosing pumps were on channels 2 and 3. So even when the timer turned the power off to those channels (the controller/head unit says they are off, and the indicator light is off), a small amt of current remains. And the dosing pumps run with such a low current that they did not consistently always turn off.


So, maybe I was just lucky with the Reefkeeper Lite - as the problem should have been there also. The electronics are beyond me....