Low Calcium and Alkalinity Levels

[aceer15]

Hey everyone, I've been using Kent Kalkwasser over the last few weeks. I have a few zoas, palys, lps and sps in my tank. Everything seems fairly healthy but my lps are not growing much. I'm hoping the kalkwasser will help these levels. I want to get some insight from some other reefers on here as to what they would do moving forward with the levels I have.

These are my levels:

2/6

Nitrates 0
Calcium 330 ppm
Alkalinity 2.5/7
salinity

Started Kalkwasser 1TSP per 5 gal of RO

2/9

Alk 2.5/7
calcium 330ppm

1.5 TSP more added to 5 gal jug

2/11

ph 7.8
salinity 1.024
nitrates 0ppm
calcium 350ppm
alk 3.1/8.7

2/17

salinity 1.024
calcium 340ppm
alk 2.2/6.2

5.5 TSP per 5 gal RO

2/20

calcium 360ppm
alk 2.2/6.2
salinity 1.024

2/25

salinity 1.025
ph 7.7
nitrates 0ppm
calcium 280ppm
alk 2.3/6.4

I'd love to hear any suggestions, my kalk is about 50% saturated in the water; I can almost double the amount of kalk but I have heard stories of tanks being killed off by it so I've been taking it slow. Is 2 part going to be required?

[Scutterborn]

Personally, I'd like to keep alk up around 9dkh and Ca closer to 400. Remember that chasing numbers can be a bad thing. Stability is the course.


-Ben-

[JVI90GREEF]

Hey everyone, I've been using Kent Kalkwasser over the last few weeks. I have a few zoas, palys, lps and sps in my tank. Everything seems fairly healthy but my lps are not growing much. I'm hoping the kalkwasser will help these levels. I want to get some insight from some other reefers on here as to what they would do moving forward with the levels I have.

These are my levels:

2/6

Nitrates 0
Calcium 330 ppm
Alkalinity 2.5/7
salinity

Started Kalkwasser 1TSP per 5 gal of RO

2/9

Alk 2.5/7
calcium 330ppm

1.5 TSP more added to 5 gal jug

2/11

ph 7.8
salinity 1.024
nitrates 0ppm
calcium 350ppm
alk 3.1/8.7

2/17

salinity 1.024
calcium 340ppm
alk 2.2/6.2

5.5 TSP per 5 gal RO

2/20

calcium 360ppm
alk 2.2/6.2
salinity 1.024

2/25

salinity 1.025
ph 7.7
nitrates 0ppm
calcium 280ppm
alk 2.3/6.4

I'd love to hear any suggestions, my kalk is about 50% saturated in the water; I can almost double the amount of kalk but I have heard stories of tanks being killed off by it so I've been taking it slow. Is 2 part going to be required?

What salt are you using and how often do you change your water/how much water per change?

[FireWater]

Line Ben said, stability is key.

Also, check your magnesium levels. Low mag will cause swings and not being able to keep the cal and alk raised up.

[ramsey]

Yep, what they said. :) I like to keep my tanks close to actual sea water. Here's a great reference guide:

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-05/rhf/index.php

The guy (Randy Holmes Farley) that wrote that has several other articles about calc/alk/mag that are hardcore if you interested in the chemistry of it all.

[aceer15]

What salt are you using and how often do you change your water/how much water per change?

I have 55 gallon system, I do 10 gallon changes once a week and use instant ocean.


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[aceer15]

Thanks y'all for the advice, I guess it need to get a mag test kit and start checking the levels there.


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[alton]

Switch from instant ocean to reef crystals and with your 10 gallon water changes things will come up.

[350gt]

Switch from instant ocean to reef crystals and with your 10 gallon water changes things will come up.

+1

Ive been using RC for years and i dont need to dose...

[FireWater]

IO is a great base salt. Most who use it wind up adding "other stuff" to it to bring levels up so they can customize their levels of parameters. If it were me I would switch over to a reef mix and not try to chase numbers. Reef Crystals is fine.

[allan]

I've enjoyed huge success with Kent. Some folks have had problems with it, but my numbers were always on target.

[allan]

Hold on, just read your OP... If your tank is primarily softies and a few lps and sps, I doubt that you have a calcium consumption requiring dosing kalk.

If you do want to dose, I'd steer clear of mixing and dumping, it should be a gradual release through the day, typically to offset evaporation. You may already be doing this.

How often are you doing water changes? I believe that your WC should be enough to stay ahead of your calcium requirements with most salts. Kent has a 540 at 1.025 or so, if memory serves.

If your stuff looks healthy I'd maintain because any sudden shift isn't going to be good.

If you want your lps to grow, wait till they have their tentacles out, and gently turkey baste fish food directly on the tentacles (GENTLY). Chalices, brains, acans, favias.... They will grow right before your eyes. It's awesome. Bear in mind that some grow slower than others, acans for example. You have five heads, months go by and there's no growth, only now you have nine heads.

They don't need to be fed, but they do love to eat.

[Bill S]

I'm going to jump in here with another thought: Have you confirmed that your test kit is OK? It wouldn't be the first time, nor the last.

I'll echo the change to RC. There's nothing wrong with IO, but RC will give you a bit more Ca.

[allan]

+1 for the test kit.

Remember when I started reporting a huge nitrate problem? Through the roof. Turned out my test kit was off.

[aceer15]

IO is a great base salt. Most who use it wind up adding "other stuff" to it to bring levels up so they can customize their levels of parameters. If it were me I would switch over to a reef mix and not try to chase numbers. Reef Crystals is fine.

I was thinking I'd eventually have to dose from what I've read about IO, but it's so cheap I'd rather dose and get that (especially since I have 200 gallons of salt lol). I don't mind dosing, I'm just trying to decide how fast I should move to 100% saturation with my kalk and whether more experienced reefers have been able to hold lps and sps tanks at the right levels.

[aceer15]

Hold on, just read your OP... If your tank is primarily softies and a few lps and sps, I doubt that you have a calcium consumption requiring dosing kalk.

If you do want to dose, I'd steer clear of mixing and dumping, it should be a gradual release through the day, typically to offset evaporation. You may already be doing this.

How often are you doing water changes? I believe that your WC should be enough to stay ahead of your calcium requirements with most salts. Kent has a 540 at 1.025 or so, if memory serves.

If your stuff looks healthy I'd maintain because any sudden shift isn't going to be good.

If you want your lps to grow, wait till they have their tentacles out, and gently turkey baste fish food directly on the tentacles (GENTLY). Chalices, brains, acans, favias.... They will grow right before your eyes. It's awesome. Bear in mind that some grow slower than others, acans for example. You have five heads, months go by and there's no growth, only now you have nine heads.

They don't need to be fed, but they do love to eat.

Right now I've got about 8-9 lps and 7 sps which haven't been growing too much (especially lps). I'm thinking there isn't enough calcium in the water for them to grow their skeleton.

I'm adding the kalk through my auto top off to offset the evap. My biggest worry is that the calcium levels are affecting skeletal growth on my corals. Zoas and palys are looking great, but the LPS refuse to grow even when feeding fairly often.

[aceer15]

I'm going to jump in here with another thought: Have you confirmed that your test kit is OK? It wouldn't be the first time, nor the last.

I'll echo the change to RC. There's nothing wrong with IO, but RC will give you a bit more Ca.

I'll take my water in to a few lfs for testing and see if they're getting the same number I am. Thanks everyone for the input and advice, I'm a new charter member on here and it's nice having some local folks to ask some questions to who arn't trying to sell you something.

[allan]

Between checking your water at an LFS and changing salts, I think you'll tighten in on your shot group.

How long has your system been running. To have the concerns that you're referencing I would imagine about a year. Your measurement dates go back to the beginning of the month, I'm assuming that you've been running your tank far longer than a month.

[FireWater]

Look into cost difference of reef crystals and check your mag levels in the mean time. Low mag will cause you to not be able to get numbers you like. You could use whatever you want and not raise cal/alk if you have low mag.

[aceer15]

Between checking your water at an LFS and changing salts, I think you'll tighten in on your shot group.

How long has your system been running. To have the concerns that you're referencing I would imagine about a year. Your measurement dates go back to the beginning of the month, I'm assuming that you've been running your tank far longer than a month.

Yea it's been up for around 9 months. I was planning to start dosing in the future with a pump but ended up picking up B-Ionic Cal, Alk and Mag buffers. They were pretty darn cheap, I'm hoping it'll allow me to raise the Mag (picked up a test kit too) and raise Cal and Alk if necessary over the next week or so. I'm planning on manual dosing as needed until i pick up the dosing pump in a month or so.

[FireWater]

Sounds like you have a plan. Good luck and take it slow when adjusting.

[allan]

Okay, let us know what your measurements are.

A side note, if your tank has been up for nine months, and you've followed a relaxed (and recommended) addition of corals after the cycle, then the large portion of your coral can't be much older than six months or so. Sps and lps don't grow very fast. There are varieties that do, and just about anyone can grow a slow grower quickly (as an outlier).... What kind of growth rate are you expecting?

Cali tort to me grew with such slowness that it almost seem to be within a time dilation.

Garf bonsai could be tracked within a week for initial growth and a month for a good encrusting and new coralites.

Tubbs mystic blue would never seem to grow, but it would be noticeably bigger from month to month.

Valida can almost be seen growing before your eyes.

Lps... I had a colony of seven heads that took me five years to grow into 34 heads.

And then take into account that there are just some systems that do well for certain coral and not others. For the longest time I couldn't grow Xenia. No problem with zoas, but people eaters were always something that was hit or miss. And the hit, never grew very much. Captain America palies, one polyp in two and a half years, 17 polyps.

Pay attention to your new kit results, but don't try to chase the numbers, especially in such a small tank.

[aceer15]

Okay, let us know what your measurements are.

A side note, if your tank has been up for nine months, and you've followed a relaxed (and recommended) addition of corals after the cycle, then the large portion of your coral can't be much older than six months or so. Sps and lps don't grow very fast. There are varieties that do, and just about anyone can grow a slow grower quickly (as an outlier).... What kind of growth rate are you expecting?

Cali tort to me grew with such slowness that it almost seem to be within a time dilation.

Garf bonsai could be tracked within a week for initial growth and a month for a good encrusting and new coralites.

Tubbs mystic blue would never seem to grow, but it would be noticeably bigger from month to month.

Valida can almost be seen growing before your eyes.

Lps... I had a colony of seven heads that took me five years to grow into 34 heads.

And then take into account that there are just some systems that do well for certain coral and not others. For the longest time I couldn't grow Xenia. No problem with zoas, but people eaters were always something that was hit or miss. And the hit, never grew very much. Captain America palies, one polyp in two and a half years, 17 polyps.

Pay attention to your new kit results, but don't try to chase the numbers, especially in such a small tank.

Thanks for the advice allan!

Some of my old duncans, blastos, acans, favia and frogspawn haven't grown at all in 4-5 months, in size or # of heads.

With a recent addition of SPS in the last 2 months and a scuba steve, hammer, torch, red goni, and another acan I've noticed my tank levels dropping some (presumably because these newer corals are using them).

I'm hoping a small dosing regiment will balance the levels at the higher numbers I am looking for. I'm by no means going to be going crazy for #'s but i'd love to have cal in the 400s and alk above the 2.5 average that it is right now.

I'll be taking it slowly and keeping everyone updated on how everything goes!

[allan]

Yeah, the blastos and frogspawn should have shown signs of growth by now.

Good luck, I'd definitely go with another salt.

[aceer15]

So how low is 1040 for mag? I did a water change 2-3 days ago if that helps anything


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[FireWater]

http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/02/27/eva5y9u8.jpg

That is from the chart in the link Ramsey posted.

[FireWater]

I would seriously look into another salt. You will spend more money trying to raise your numbers than just buying a quality salt mix made for reef parameters.

[Big_Pun]

i would stop worrying about numbers, in my years in this hobby ive found stability is key, ive had a full sps tank that ph wouldnt get above 7.6 low was 7.0 and my coral looked great. it was a constant in the numbers and in the ball park, if all your coral look great leave it alone. the biggest thing i worry about is phos and nitrates which are easy to hold down, water changes and media, by just doing constant water changes you replenish needed trace elements so your removing bad stuff and adding good stuff. dont chase numbers


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[Zack]

i would stop worrying about numbers, in my years in this hobby ive found stability is key, ive had a full sps tank that ph wouldnt get above 7.6 low was 7.0 and my coral looked great. it was a constant in the numbers and in the ball park, if all your coral look great leave it alone. the biggest thing i worry about is phos and nitrates which are easy to hold down, water changes and media, by just doing constant water changes you replenish needed trace elements so your removing bad stuff and adding good stuff. dont chase numbers


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Agreed 100%, in this hobby, stability is much more important than perfect numbers.

[aceer15]

Thanks guys! I'm going to look into different salt to keep levels more even


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[aceer15]

Got the reef crystals and am going to add the first batch of water to the tank. Any thoughts on doing a larger or smaller water change when changing salt types?


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[FireWater]

I would do a slow change. If you want to up the amount of water you change then I would only go up 5 or 10 gallons above what you normally do.

[FireWater]

Either that, or I would up the frequency of changes. For instance if you change 20 gallons every two weeks then I would do 20 every week for a while.

[wbwoodworks]

I use red sea coral pro and I love it, it's kinda expensive for the big bucket, but honestly I think it's worth it.

[aceer15]

Thanks for the advice, I think I'm gonna change frequency. I just picked up a box of the reef crystals so I'm going to test this for a bit before I buy a new box of something else


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[Dean]

I use red sea coral pro and I love it, it's kinda expensive for the big bucket, but honestly I think it's worth it.

+1