I feel speacial!....UH OH is this plausable???

[Louie3]

:wub Yay I just did my first zoa frag! the mother colony was split into thirds then 1 baby colony was split in half and placed on a cool looking rock. 8)....



I tested for calcium and my calcium is at 540ppm by a hagen test kit. My pH did drop to 7.9ppm. I just ran out of Alk solution. so is there a home remady that I can mix n' pour?

[purplesprite]

Did you wear gloves?Or do you not get ill from fragging them?Oh sorry I am assuming you put your hands on them.

[Louie3]

nope I did all the recommended procausions, wore gloves and my paintball mask

[Louie3]

I tested for calcium and my calcium is at 540ppm by a hagen test kit. My pH did drop to 7.9ppm. I just ran out of Alk solution. so is there a home remady that I can mix n' pour?

[Ross]

wow thats very precautious. I frag zoos all the time and have gotten squirted hundreds of times and never had anything happen, even got some in the eye the other day.

[Louie3]

yeah I foollowed the instructions on ZoaID.com

[matt]

Baking soda works great as a buffer. I'm pretty sure you've asked that question a couple of times before and I guess you don't believe me...but it's really true, I promise. Since your ph is a little low, you could mix in a little washing soda (sodium carbonate) if you can find it. But it's not really necessary, the baking soda will work fine. Here's a link to help you figure out how much:
http://home.comcast.net/%7Ejdieck1/chem_calc3.html

BTW, I wouldn't bet the farm on the results from a Hagen kit. I had a friend test his tank, get 450, then test it again and get 350, sooooo....the point is you probably have plenty of calcium.

[Louie3]

since I dont know the alk OR Mag what will I do???

[Louie3]

Sadly that was the only kit availble at the LFS, but ill soon be switching to another brand once I know which is some what as great as salifert ( way too expensive)

[GaryP]

Louie,

Any of the alkalinity test kits are fine. That particular test isn't really rocket science. Just a little bit of pH indicator and a bottle of dilute acid. Just make sure that you get one that gives you a numerical answer and not a Low/OK/High answer. I know that you are pretty limited in what is available to you at the LFS down there.

The baking soda/washing soda recipe is fine for what you need. Your calcium is really high and that is probably pushing your alkainity down. I would suggest a water change with a low calcium salt like IO to get it down to within reasonable levels. Alkalinity is more important then calcium is coral growth. Get the alkalinity up and stop worrying so much about supplementing calcium (within reason). Not only are you starving your corals for alkalinity, its letting your pH get low too. 7.9 is not super low, but I would be willing to bet that if you tested it first thing in the AM it would be even lower then that.

Whenever you have high calcium like you have, it will precipitate out the alkalinity when you add it. They have to be balanced. With low alkalinity, calcification by the corals comes to a halt and the calcium will remain high until the alkalinity comes up. Adding more buffer only causes more precipitation and you are just wasting your additives until its back in balance again. This is hard on your pumps too because guess where a lot of the precipitation occurs? That's right, in the pumps. So, you might want to break them down and clean them with some vinegar.

[Louie3]

After dosing 8tsp of baking soda in 1g of water and I added it over night my pH rose back up to 8.3. when I tested it just about 10min ago. For the sad part my calcium is still really high. Thanks for the info and I have been using IO salt for about 2 months.

[GaryP]

If you are using IO then chances are you are over dosing your calcium supplement. Stop using it for now and then when it gets back down to around 400 ppm you can start to slowly dose again.

In the mean time, go get an alkalinity kit and a magnesium kit would be a good idea too. Remember the old saying, "if you're not testing for it, don't dose it."

[Marlin]

Louie:
I'm surprised your Ca is so high, generally IO salt is a little low on Ca. Are you dosing something to get your Ca that high?

[Louie3]

Rick, The only thing I dose in my aquarium is Kent Marine Liquid Reactor, It raises alk, cal, and pH. I've been mixing it with freshwater to lower the calcium concentration and raise the alk by 51ppm.
Gary, I've stoped dosing and im still getting high levels my pH has stabalized at 8.3 for now. and when I tested the pH at night the level dramaticly dropped to 7.9.

[GaryP]

Kent Marine Liquid Reactor = snake oil. Bah Humbug!!!

The reason your calcium is so high is that you don't really have a lot of corals that use a lot of calcium. More is going in then is being used. Unless you have a lot of fast growing SPS you probably don't need to dose anything except buffer. Alkalinity will naturally decrease even with no coral growth. Ph will usually fall without it.

The reason that your pH was low at night is that algae produce only CO2 at night, while they use it during the day. This is the reason why some people use reverse daylight lighting on their refugiums. The plants in the refugium are using the CO2 produced by the algae and animals that are "asleep" in the main tank when the lights are off. CO2 is converted into carbonic acid in water and pushes the pH down at night. Solution? Increased alkalinity and/or adding a refugium to your system. Alkalinity is a chemical buffer. That means it resists a change in pH that is either up or down. A high pH is a fairly rare situation. The natural trend in pH is downwards in an aquarium.

[Louie3]

Well I have a colony or big green button zoa's about 150 and around 200 small zoas and 3 mushrooms dotn think thats alot. Yeah I have the fuge ready with a return pump but all I need is an overflow but like a supersmall one thats hard to find.

[GaryP]

None of those soft corals are going to use much calcium. As I said earlier, you probably don't need to add much calcium. I would suggest you concentrate on monitoring and maintaining your alkalinity instead.

You know how to supplement it, now all you need to do is work out monitoring. You can't really do it with a pH kit. All that will tell you is when its really, really low. Alkalinity levels can fall really fast and all salts need to be supplemented between water changes in a reef system. As I said earlier, your alkalinity level is more critical then calcium. You can do well with calcium levels below 400 ppm. If you get below a DKH of 7 on your alkalinity, you're going to start seeing problems with several things. Get a kit.

[acrofreak]

Mix 1 1/4 cups of baking soda to one gal. of ro/di water. Dose everyday, depending on your tank size and needs. Good starting place would be about 30ml a day. Adjust from there up or down. Once you get your perm. to where you want them get some dowflake, you can order it from www.buckeyefieldsupply.com, 16 cups for $11 plus shipping comes out to around $20. Add 1 1/4 cup to gallon of ro/di water and mix. Add equal parts daily to maintain your Ca and Alk. Works great and cheap to. You can get about 12 gal. or so for 20 bucks.

[GaryP]

Once you get your perm. to where you want them get some dowflake, you can order it from www.buckeyefieldsupply.com,
Why would you suggest dosing calcium to a soft coral tank? That's what has led him to where he is now, that is, out of balance.

[acrofreak]

My intentions were that after he gets his perimeters in line to add equal parts of both to help keep them in line. To much of one or the other will cause an imbalance. Of course for his tank if he just did weekly water changes that might be more than enough to maintain balances of both ca and alk providing he uses a good salt.

[GaryP]

My intentions were that after he gets his perimeters in line to add equal parts of both to help keep them in line.
OK, I can understand that. But here is where there is a problem. They aren't used in equal parts. You will always use more alkalinity then calcium, especially in a soft coral tank. Even in a hard coral tank, calcification takes places at a ratio of 2:1 (carbonate:calcium).

In a soft coral tank, calcification is not going to be the main demand on the alkalinity levels. Neuutralization of bacterially produced acids is going to be the major demand. The bacteria chewing up the waste products in a tank produce low molecular weight acids such as acetic acid (vinegar) and CO2. The demand on alkalinity is the sum of these non-calcification demands and calcification.

If we are looking at a soft coral tank, the demand on alkalinity is going to be a lot higher then it is for calcium because of the bacterial acids. Soft corals do have some calcification, especially leather corals, but not to the degree that stony corals do. I usually recommend that reefers work out a weekly or daily calcium and alkalinity demand and dose supplements accordingly. If your daily calcium demand is 5 ppm and you are dosing 10 ppm, you are quickly going to be out of balance once again. This was probably the case with Louie's tank. Once you are out of balance, dosing more alkalinity does not result in regaining balance, it just makes sand (calcium carbonate precipitation). Of course there is a non-coral calcium and alkalinity demand component as well from things like coraline algae and other critters such as snails. A "reef salt" will usually have enough calcium to meet this demand without much additional calcium supplementation. The alkalinity in such a salt is usually not much higher then NSW levels and will need to be supplemented.

One of the problems I have noticed in my own tanks is that we get into what I call a supplement roller coaster. We may dose a 2 part on Saturdays, but by the following Friday the level is low again. Rather then doing that, I would recommend dosing smaller amounts more frequently so the highs and lows are not as exaggerated, in other words smooth out the roller coaster.

[acrofreak]

I agree. That's why I would suggest a two part. I dose my tank daily in the am, now my tank is sps and clams only so I have a higher demand. And if your balances are in check, dosing equal parts on a daily basis will help you stay off the rollercoaster. In his case he may only need dose 10-15ml a day. That would something he would have to determine for himself.
With a softie tank he may not to dose at all if he dose weekly water changes with a good quality reef salt. If he uses IO then he may have to dose. I agree he doesn't need a high ca and his alk levels need to stay up. But if he can maintain NSW levels he shouldn't have any problems.

sorry I have to talk in lamens terms, Don't speak in scientific lingo to well.
Sticking to basics and good tank maintance will keep you out of trouble every time. Well 99% of the time

[matt]

Louie, did you dose 8 tsp of baking soda in a 55 gallon tank? That sounds like quite a lot. If your calcium is really high, dosing that much baking soda would probably cause a snowstorm of calcium carbonate, so maybe your calcium isn't that high.

Here's why Liquid Reactor is such a bad idea. Alk test kits work by using acids and an indicator to show how much acid is needed to drop the ph of the sample. The liquid reactor stuff is just ground up calcium carbonate, and those tiny particles stay in suspension where they are not usable by your corals, but will cause an Alk test kit (maybe Calcium too, I don;t know) to give you a false reading because it takes excess acid to dissolve the calcium carbonate in your sample. Don't believe me? Try taking a sample of aquarium water, testing for Alk, then take another sample, stir in some sand like SD, and test the cloudy water. You'll find the Alk off the chart, even though obviously there are not more carbonate ions in solution. People sometimes say they add stuff like that and their Ca and Alk is much more "stable" That's because the stuff is not usuable by corals, and consequently stays in the water, ready to fool the test kits.

Back to Louie's tank...get a Salifert Alkalinity and Calcium test kit from Premium Aquatics. They're not that expensive and just think of the money you're going to save using household products instead the absurdly marked up aquarium products to get your tank chemistry together. Okay, once you have the kits, you could do a big water change as everyone else is sayng with IO, but you should probably measure the Ca and Alk of the new water before you add it to your tank. Usually IO mixes to about 350 PPM Calcium and about 9.5 DKH Alk. If you want to lower your Calcium, fine, add it as is, but ultimately to use IO you need to add some calcium chloride to new water to bring it to 400 PPM.

Somehow, you have to get your tank water so that Ca is about 400, and Alk is about 8-10 dkh, using the SALIFERT KITS. Once that's done, you can dissolve baking soda in fresh water in one container, dowflake or dupont calcium hardness increaser or even kent turbo calcium (if you can get a deal or just enjoy spending lots of money) in water in other container, and then there's your ultra cheap and ultra effective two part supplement. This is "Randy's recipe" for a two part additive; you'll probably use recipe 1 to get and keep your ph up. Here's a link for the recipe:
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-02/rhf/index.php

Okay, so your tank levels are in balance and you have the home made two part supplement. Now you test your alkalinity at a certain time of day, right down the number, don't add anything to your tank (except fresh water top off) for 24 hrs, and test alkalinity again. Don't worry about Calcium. Then compare the second day number with the first. No difference? Fine, do the same thing again 24 hrs later. Make sure you do the test at the same time every day. BTW, this won't work with testing for Ca everyday; that level drops and raises much more slowly. Use the Salifert Alk test kit.

Okay, so eventually you will find, by comparing the numbers, a daily (or weekly if it's slow) drop in Alk. Then you go to the reef chemistry calculator that I posted for you last time, plug in the numbers, and you'll see how much of Randy's recipe 1 (or 2 if you're using it) you need to increase the Alk to the first day's level. That's how much of each part you dose on a daily (or weekly, depending on your drop rate) basis. You don't have to worry about the Ca level, just does the two parts, monitor the Alk level, and if it's okay your Ca will also be okay.

For a comparison, my 60 gal corner tank needs 1 gallon of KW per day and 2 ozs ( big shot) of recipe 2 everyday to maintain Alk levels at 8-10 dkh. That's a high demand for such a small tank, and it's going up fast as my corals and clams grow. If I were buying aquarium products like Kent KW mix, and B-ionic 2 part, I'd be spending a significant amount on this stuff. Instead, I can get a year's supply of KW for $1.50 (pickling lime) a year's supply of Alk supplement for $1 (baking soda) and a year's supply of Ca supplement cheap by using dowflake....I have not actually done that yet because I was able to trade Ace a couple of becketts for a big tub of turbo calcium, but when it runs out I'll get the dowflake.

Man what a long post...sorry, but if you follow this method you'll take care of all your Ca and Alk problems. Without the right test kit you're out of luck, so start with that.