Calcium

[Reef69]

I just tested the calcium in my 90 gal. and its at 600 ..lol..good?..bad?//what do i do?..i tried to keep it at 500 but..dunno what happened..everything seems perfect..

[OldSalty]

A little high if your test kit is good. I'd test again to make sure. If It is that high you can do some small water changes to bring it down to 450 to 500 is about where we like to keep our levels.

Kelly

[GaryP]

The question is what is your alkalinity. If your calcium is that high, your alkalinity is going to be very low. The two have to be balanced in a reef tank. You probably also need to test your Magnesium. Magnesium helps to maintain the balance.

[Reef69]

yeah, you are righ Gary...well, i dose B-Ionic daily..35 ml. of each component..now i realize the mistake..ill check alk. and and mag. later tonight, im just wondering whats the worst thing that can happen...dont want it to crash..

[Reef69]

NM, ill take a sample of water tomorrow to get tested, didnt find the kits to do so...

[GaryP]

Reef69,

My best advice is to never add a supplement that you aren't testing for. The recommended dose on the bottle of a two part is a starting point. No two tanks are never the same and will have different requirements. After doing some intense testing you can determine a pattern as to the rate that supplements are depleted and you can start to back off on testing. Notice that I didn't say stop testing. Your weekly demand changes as your tank matures and you add or lose critters. The salt that you use, and how often you do water changes can also make a large difference in your weekly demand.

I admit I have done the same thing in the past. Your situation is not unique.

By bumping up your alkalinity with a level of 600 ppm you may simply be lowering your calcium by precipitating the calcium as calcium carbonate. That can be hard on your pumps. I would recommend you service your pumps and make sure you don't have calcium carbonate build up in the impellors. In my experience that's where you usually see a high calcium problem first. High pressure areas like pumps catalyze the precipitation of calcium carbonate. You may want to consider doing a fairly large (~20%) water change before trying to bring your alkalinity up. I wouldn't recommend using any of the calcium component of the B-ionic until you start to see the alkalinity come back up. Alkalinity can be depleted by other things than just coral growth. On the other hand, calcium is usually only removed by growth of corals and coralline algae as well as a few other things. That's one of the problems with a two part system. I use a lot more of the alkalinity component than I do the calcium component.