what will happen????? alk raise to much?

[nitro069]

so i am dialing in my dosers and had to raise my alkalinity today to bring it back up to 9.5. I did the math and if i dose 60 ml it will raise .8 dkh. While my wife was talking to me and i for once was paying attention to her, I accidentally grabbed the alk bottle instead of the calcium again and double dosed. whats the worse that will happen if i raised my alk 2 dkh in one shot(going on assumption math is wrong and the 120 ml raised my dkh by 2).

I am using esv b-ionic 2 part to raise and brs to dose

 

[Reef Hero]

I guess we will find out......haha
I have Double dosed before too......I still dose by hand every morning and once when I was still have half asleep I accidentally dosed alk twice lol.....nothing noticeable happened.....


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[nitro069]

makes me feel a bit better. tested alk again and its been only about 15 min but its reading 12. and my ph is saying 8.8(lets hope its wrong) on api kit. the only thing going on so far is 1/4 of my breathing xenias are closed and my one ricordia is lifted off the rock. other then that everything else is normal so far. is there a time frame i should wait to get accurate readings to re test.

 

[Reef Hero]

What do you mean accurate readings? Wouldn't the readings you are getting now be accurate? Dosing alk will raise ph as well as alk.....there's nothing much you can do now except wait it out......what are your normal ph and alk values?


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[nitro069]

What do you mean accurate readings? Wouldn't the readings you are getting now be accurate? Dosing alk will raise ph as well as alk.....there's nothing much you can do now except wait it out......what are your normal ph and alk values?


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By "accurate" I mean, are the readings I'm gonna get after 15 min gonna be what the parameter actually raised or is there a swing of say over an hour?
I try to keep my alk at 9.5 and it is now 12.2.  what i am confused about is when i dose 60 ml, my parameters  raise about .8 when tested 24 hours later. I have never tested immediately after a dose so i don't know if it raised higher and used up some over the course of 24 hours(don't think this is the case)  I followed the instructions on the esv bottle and the math added up. but when i double dosed today my alk raised about 3.5 dkh. so im not really sure whats going on here.

 

[Reef Hero]

Alk is constantly being used...... Testing 24hours later will not tell you what you actually raised your alk and ph to after dosing....... I run a real time ph probe and my ph climbs immediately after dosing alk and then starts falling back down again just minutes later...... Alk is the same.....I would only wait about 15 mins after dosing to test each....... If you are dosing daily or even multiple times per day like a lot of us then your alk is obviously going up and down a little bit each time.....



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[nitro069]

Alk is constantly being used...... Testing 24hours later will not tell you what you actually raised your alk and ph to after dosing....... I run a real time ph probe and my ph climbs immediately after dosing alk and then starts falling back down again just minutes later...... Alk is the same.....I would only wait about 15 mins after dosing to test each....... If you are dosing daily or even multiple times per day like a lot of us then your alk is obviously going up and down a little bit each time.....



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Thanks for the info. looks like my tank may be using more alk than i thought. and my math is off I guess - Find it really hard sometimes not knowing how much my rock displaces. no clue what the the weight is but i know its a shit ton and some of it is really dense. kinda like me  ;D
Things are looking good so far and my xenias have opened back up so hopefully all will be well.

 

[Reef Hero]

As your tank begins to use more alk like mine is doing now..... Eventually a doser will be needed to dose small amounts throughout the day while lights are off because dosing large amounts that are required will eventually just not be safe to dose all at once....... I am hoping to have my doser for alk and calcium setup soon.....this way my ph and alk won't spike too high......it will have small spikes instead.....see what I am getting at.....I would start testing your alk say about 20 mins after you dose and then again 24 hours later.....this tells you where you put your alk at by dosing and how much is used up after 24 hours.....same goes for calcium.....
I am using the esv bionic two part...... I am afraid to switch to soda ash and calcium chloride because I see great results with bionic two part....... I have started buying the bulk 8 gallon pails of bionic two part to save money.......

Oh and I don't believe that the LiveRock uses much of the alk and calcium......I think it is more the coral specimens as well as coralline algae which does cover your rock.....I could be wrong tho.....I know that as I have upped my coral load and they grow, I need to very slowly continue adding a little more two part to make up for this......simple monthly testing of alk and calcium should keep you inline properly with what is needed as your tank matures....



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[nitro069]

Ive got my dose pumps set to go for 11 ml per night and tested. still found a drop in alk and cal. bumped it up to 15 min. used the bionic to raise back to levels. i too have noticed good results with the esv but the cost of it over soda ash are night and day so i had to give it a go. if nothing else i can use the pumps with bionic, but from what i have read the soda ash should work just fine. what i like about the bionic is that it includes mag and trace elements.

 

[Reef Hero]

I was going to say that in my last post too but decided not to......yes esv contains much more.....my mag is always high....only think I have noticed to be a little low according to ideal readings is my potassium which usually reads between 380 to 340......a lot say it should be 400.....I ordered some KZ potassium (forget real name of it) from IA....
Eventually I may switch from esv as well or maybe mix the two.....like you said price is just not comparable at all when from what I have seen results seem to be very comparable....


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[Kleko]

Based off of what I've read the only big concern would be shocking the system and reppid effects on the pH.
Keep us posted

 

[nitro069]

I was going to say that in my last post too but decided not to......yes esv contains much more.....my mag is always high....only think I have noticed to be a little low according to ideal readings is my potassium which usually reads between 380 to 340......a lot say it should be 400.....I ordered some KZ potassium (forget real name of it) from IA....
Eventually I may switch from esv as well or maybe mix the two.....like you said price is just not comparable at all when from what I have seen results seem to be very comparable....


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How long have you been dosing potssium? Have you noticed any effect in your corals?

Based off of what I've read the only big concern would be shocking the system and reppid effects on the pH.
Keep us posted

There was an immediate spike in ph. my crappy api kit said 8.8 but that could have been anything between 8-9 from what i have read about api kits and harleymike test results going from api to industrial tester at work(and they are accurate)

The only two thing i noticed was my ricordias lifted off the rock and 1/4 of my xenais closed up. everything is back to normal now coral wise, just need to test ph.

 

[Reef Hero]

I am still waiting on the potassium..... Haven't used it yet but I am excited to see what it will do.....hopefully bill gets his KZ shipment soon because I use Coral snow and Ecobak a lot and I am now out as of yesterday.....might have to source this elsewhere....


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[nitro069]

Bill is usually pretty good at getting his orders in a timely manner, except for that one time when i wanted some stupid refractometer calibration fluid and it seemed to take forever.

 

[Reef Hero]

Yea I had the same problem with getting some 53ms solution......potassium has been on order for a while now tho.....not too concerned about it tho as I am about getting some more coral snow and Ecobak.....do you know anyone else who carries KZ locally?


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[nitro069]

Well when i woke up this morning and inspected my tank everything looked good so I think im in the clear. note to self, don't listen to the wife when working with the tank.  ;D
When I was talking about accurate tests earlier this is kinda what i was talking about. I tested My alk this morning aprox 12 hours after my mishap. last night right after the dose I tested 4 times - two from dt and two from sump. all four tests came back at 12.2 which is a 3.6 dkh jump -  with my math i would have expected it to jump 1.8 to 10.4. when i tested this morning my alk was at 10.4. I cant see it falling 2 points in 12 hours.

 

[Reef Hero]

It can...... Especially if you are dosing that much......
Good to hear that everything looks good......I use a Hanna alk checker.....highly recommend......like you said regarding API test kits.....they are not as accurate and your readings could have been off....
You had mentioned that your ph spiked to almost a value of 9 so I don't doubt that your alk could  have gone up drastically...... Only way to know is keep testing after dosing and then 12 or 24 hours later.....

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[JordanHurst]

Just an FYI, im using the 2 part dosing from brs and have the dosing pumps, u said you had it run for 15 mins in the night? is that per hour or total?
I dose for 8 minutes 12 times throughout the whole night cycle - around 105 ml. over 12 hours That keeps my dKh around 9.5 and my ph stablr around 8.1, If your trying to make adjustments do it slow. set the dosing pumps up as recomended by brs depening on ur coral load, then when you do those calculations to raise ur parameters do it slowly over a couple days, your better off to go slow and gradually increase, then huge jump to where u want to be and then hope u stay there and the corals are good.
I started with the BRS reccomended dosing and then let it run for 2 weeks tested and slowly adjusted the dosing time until I was happy with a steady result.

 

[nitro069]

Just an FYI, im using the 2 part dosing from brs and have the dosing pumps, u said you had it run for 15 mins in the night? is that per hour or total?
I dose for 8 minutes 12 times throughout the whole night cycle - around 105 ml. over 12 hours That keeps my dKh around 9.5 and my ph stablr around 8.1, If your trying to make adjustments do it slow. set the dosing pumps up as recomended by brs depening on ur coral load, then when you do those calculations to raise ur parameters do it slowly over a couple days, your better off to go slow and gradually increase, then huge jump to where u want to be and then hope u stay there and the corals are good.
I started with the BRS reccomended dosing and then let it run for 2 weeks tested and slowly adjusted the dosing time until I was happy with a steady result.

Thanks for the advice. I am dosing that once per night. not a very heavy load just cant seem to keep it up :? : I was only bringing it up .8 per day over three days and the last day I double dosed. seems to be good now though. I started with the brs recommended amount and bumped it up a little. track it over a couple weeks and hope it stays stable