LPS Problems

Wow that's crazy calcium. You should switch for sure kylie as you have very little in your tank that will use up calcium.

 

If I were you Kylie I would just use Instant ocean for now and if you end up adding more sps down the road then use reefcrystals. I would do a water change everyother day for 2 or 3 water changes. This should bring your calcium down to a acceptable range. Then just do your normal wekly water changes. FYI coralville bay has the 50g bags of IO for $9.99

 

IMO whether Coralife is a great salt or not, it would not be in production if it killed animals freshly mixed. Looking at the list of brands I see a few others that have been used sucessfully with no problems and they have calcium levels just as high. Very few salts are perfect right out of the box, by doing small water changes parameters change little. Those who have reefs will always end up using some form of supplements to keep things at desired levels anyway. Adding some baking soda if PH is in range will raise Alk and lower Calcium. 1 teaspoon will raise 50 gallons by 1dkh roughly. If PH is low either bake the baking soda (my choice) or use washing soda making sure there are no perfumes or surfactants. I would try to maintain 8dkh

You're more than welcome to change salts if you feel it's going to change things. From reading your posts I would say the biggest issue you have is water quality and possibly flow. IIRC you've lost a number or corals and if they were sloughing tissue in the tank it can rapidly foul the water. It's great to get waste to the surface of a reef tank but the water needs to be moved to filtration or manually removed.

Many of us have not seen your setup so we are only going off the info you provide, do you have any pics of how things are setup? It might give people a chance to throw out other possible problems.

 

Hard to say which is the best salt, so many opinions on the matter........at any rate, water changes do seem to be in order, whether you switch salts or not. LPS will use *some* calcium, but your calcium shouldn't be off the charts. When one things is way out of line, other things will follow, like alk and magnesium.

Do you ever see the color change with the API test? You should at some point if you keep adding drops.

 

I personally doubt that high calcium is the issue here. I think it is something to look at and correct. But I doubt it is the cause of your problem. That being said, I don't know what the cause is.

 

Posted By Kylie on 10/29/2010 10:54 AM 
Does Instant Ocean for sure have a lower Ca starting? If so, I am going to get some of that and do a few WC's like FishBrain suggested.
Yes calcium of IO is around 400

 

Coralife is a great salt and i use it along with a few others but i also have the corals that consume it at a fast rate. The high calcium in your tank, with the on the low side alk 6 you've said ,is more than likely a factor in your LPS corals receding. It may not be the only cause but unless you have a the demand for the uptake i would switch salt brands to a bit lower calcium one. That being said, every tank is different and what works for one may not for another.

 

So which would you guys rather have for parameters?.. 8dkh 500 cal 1380 mag or 11dkh 400 cal 1350 mag or 13dkh 490 cal 1440mag......this is assuming no calcification occuring and consistant values

 

None of them. I do use reef crystals which is your third set of numbers but I keep my numbers at ca 420, alk 8, mag 1400 and a water change never changes thing much.

 

lol....none are ideal but personally I would rather have the first. Alk to me has always been more important than cal. I posted that becuase the 2nd are the "numbers" for IO and the 3rd is Reef Crystals

 

none, 8- 9 dKH 400-450 cal 1350 -1400 mag

http://www.wetwebmedia.com/alkalinity.htm

 

+1 rc1214b on the alk

 

You're numbers are great btw Bill IMO.....
My point to this is that if theoretically Kylie has little calcification an easy approach to her elevated calcium would be to add some Alk supplement. It will get her in the more important range and will drive down calcium. She can do this with the baking soda method posted above for a couple dollars in investment. After target Alk is in range she can then monitor the Alk drop over a period of every couple days adding more Alk to keep it at 8 or whatever she chooses. It may take a couple weeks but assuming she does have some coralline algae growth the Cal will continue to drop into the 400's. At that point periodic water changes should have minimal impact like ours do when we add a high Alk or Cal mix.
I think if she focuses on that, continue with the GFO in proper amounts, and keep that skimmer going things should turn around
And yes your coral could rebuild itself but I can't say if yours will succeed

 

Thats my advice.......good luck with whatever route you choose

 

Wow! Thanks for all of that info! Not sure what I'm going to do now.. Are there any negative effects of using baking soda long term? If so, I'd rather go with the IO.

Also, which is easier to do? Raise Alk (obviously with baking soda) or have to raise cal later?

 

lol woops, forgot I was on the Petland account. /DesktopModules/ActiveForums/themes/_default//emoticons/smile.gif This is still Kylie

 

Baking soda is a completely safe way of increasing Alk, No matter which route you go, whether it's sticking with current salt or switching brands you are going to have to adjust levels once things are consumed. That's just the way it works.

I would recommend you read up on Alk, Cal, Mg and how they are intertwined. It will help you understand how/why things work.

http://archive.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=102605