Help, what are we doing wrong?

Earlier you were saying that your kh is at 125.3? Isn't that really high? You should be having your kh level between 9 and 11 from what I understand. If I am seeing that right that might be your whole problem your alkalinity is way too high.

Let me know if I am wrong on my assumption because it seems nobody else noticed this.

Trevor

 

on the chart to read it shows the dkh in one column and the gh/kh in the other. he listed the gh/kh number which is 7 for dkh. which is low

 

Natural sea water is 7dkh

 

7 dKh calcium should be at 410 to be in balance...

-JB

 

No we never did think of having someone else "babysit" them/DesktopModules/ActiveForums/themes/_default//emoticons/smile.gif I didn't even know that that was "proper" to do/DesktopModules/ActiveForums/themes/_default//emoticons/smile.gif I think we are going to try the reaf calculator and see if we can't get our calcium lower and our alkalinity up and work on keeping that more normal. Since this morning, when I first posted, the big birdsnest has turned more white, but our frags of it are still doing ok. The ORA birdsnest has not had any more white spreading through out it, just the same tips as yesturday. Maybe we can still save them...
Thanks again to everyone for all of your help!

 

Trevor- I think we bought corals from you, if this is the same Trevor. We are in Ankeny, saw you again at the coral show? Cory and Cori? I (girl) am the one who have been posting, yes, I reported the kH wrong. It was at 7.

 

Yep yep I thought this was you. Sucks about your birdsnest if you guys want, my offer to replace (for free) the birdsnest you bought from me it is still on the table just stop out sometime.

Trevor

 

Thanks for that but we need to figure out this problem first... Our Calcium is still rising (600 today) and our alkalinity is still at 7! We ended up fragging a few branches of the big birdsnest and the frags are doing well and the "mother tree" itself has actually slowed down on turning white. The "Ora Birdsnest" from the show is still turning white (from the outside in!) but has slowed immensly also. I'm playing with the reef chemistry calculator to see what to do about the calcium being to high and the alkalinity being to low. Any suggestions?

 

Yea that would be the best choice wait until you feel confortable about adding more coral. You don't want to throw away anymore money then you have to in this hobby.

Trevor

 

what are you dosing currently? You have to be manually adding calcium to the tank in one form or the other for it to continue to rise

 

we are not dosing with anything, the calcium just keeps rising. I tried two different kinds of calcium tests and they both said the same, 600. We do water changes with Reef Crystals, but we didn't do a water change this weekend (like usual) because someone said to use a salt with less Calcium and we haven't gotten one yet. I have been reading up on calcium and alkalinity, and it apears that it is nearly impossible for Calcium to KEEP rising since corals use calcium so much. How is this possible? We started adding baking soda today, dosing it slowly accordingly to the reef calculator, to raise the alkalinity. The wierdest thing is is that we add 1-2 gallons of RO water, not salt mixed, daily due to evaporation. We keep checking the levels and they are staying right where they had been, besides the calcium raising. How is this possible? And its not like we don't have alot of corals, believe me, we have quite a few for a 55 gallon tank. Any suggestions?

 

I would say testing eror if your calcium were actualy that high your tank would look like a snow storm. Take a sample of water to your local pet stor and have them test it for calcium.

 

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-06/rhf/index.php
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-05/rhf/index.php
Here are just a couple articles that you may find helpful with your calcium, ph and alkalinity problems

 

Actually, I think we just figured it out. We started using this new product, Black Powder, our local fish store said they use to swear by it but no one would ever buy it so they stopped stocking it. We were looking over all of the stuff that we were adding and on the bottle it says "contains high levels of available calcium". So, I guess we were dosing and didn't even realize it. Our alkalinity is up to 9 now! Calcium has dropped to 580. The last time we added the black powder was 3 nights ago so it should be going down, hopefully. We will see! Thanks everyone!!!

 

Thanks for those two websites, I had actually found the same ones from the reef calculator. I have been learning so much about this hobby, its great!

 

yeah dosing a bunch of stuff never ends well, my advice would be to stop dosing everything, stick on your water changes and see how things go. I think you'll find this hobby gets alot easier when you let nature do what it does