KH/DKH

[RADERBY]

WHAT IS A GOOD READING..ALSO I USE REEF DNA AND IT TELL YOU THAT IT CAN CAUSE FALSE READINGS FOR NITRATES, ANYONE ELSE USE IT? GOOD? BAD? WHAT ARE YOUR READINGS LIKE? THANKS

[Ed]

8 to 12 is a good range for DKH. Nitrate should be zero or very close to it.

BTW, PLEASE TURN OFF THE CAPS!;)

They are hard to read and it is considered shouting.

[GaryP]

Natural Seawater has a HKH of around 8.5. Most reefers runs their alkalinity in the 8-12 range. I shoot for 9-10.

Remember that alkalinity can drop more quickly than other readings. There are a lot of things that deplete it. I drip buffer in my system every couple of days to compensate for this and prevent large swings. You don't want to dump a bunch of buffer in at one time. Some critter like shrimp and crabs are sensitive to large changes. That's why I recommend dripping buffer, diluted in make up water. Its wasy to make a drip rig with some air hose tubing and a small plastic air hose valve.

[Instar]

Good stuff, helps new life bloom on the rocks when starting a new tank too. Most people on reef boards will call it "snake oil". I use Reef DNA Pro when starting a new tank, and often when adding a new fish, sps coral or moving something. (It will also combat ick along with a temperature increase just in case you are wondering.) The stuff does what the label says and I always keep some in the frig just in case. Don't shake it when mixing, just invert the bottle gently so the simple protein chains in it are not destoyed. I also don't test for nitrates because it has a warning this will give false tests on the label. It doesn't raise it that much or for very long in regard to the sensitivity of a home test kit though, so you should not see much difference if you use the products correctly in a marine tank thats properly set up. I don't use it after things are very stabile as a system really doens't need any more proteins than what the food adds once its stabile.
In natural seawater for some oceans, dKh can be about 7.6 to a little more and when altering this to our higher reef tank buffered water, acclimation and/or changes should be done very slowly. My newly mixed salt tests in this range as well. A fast change in dKh can bring death to inverts and so much stress to fish that is enhances disease outbreaks. This means acclimate s-l-o-w-l-y and completely, not just filling a bag once over the time of an hour but fill that bag over 2 hours, dump it mostly out, fill it again, do it again x3 and then check it before assuming acclimation is complete. dKh and salinity must be equalized inside the animal for the most part before adjusting to temperature and plunking them into the tank. Shock from shipping and handling seems to be diminished when using the Reef DNA Professional product as new arrivals for me do quite well. Some things will love a dKh of 12 and others will not. The biggest thing on that is the amount of change that occurs over a weeks time. Most reef life can move into higher dKh values if its done very slowly. But, highly altered chemistry means there is less room for error without disasterous consequences. It is not necessary or really a good idea to run dKh values over 10 in a reef tank unless all you have in there to care for is sps and then that high is still rather questionable IMO.