need assistant with Carbonate hardness

[Milez803]

ever since i switch salt, reef crystal... my tank has slowly crashing.. i notice some coral have white spot on them and issue slowly dying.. i thought it might be a bad batch of salt..so i bought red sea brand.. i tested my water everything seem fine except for the carbonate hardness is at 3-4 ..anyone know a way to buff it up back to 8 to 12.. i even try using kalkwasser to drip..over night and hasn't seen any boost yet.. so any advice would be greatful..

milez

 

[Pentagona]

Use a buffer.....there's a ton of them on the market. Will buffer your pH to around 8.3 and raise dKH.

 

[fairlan]

Use a buffer.....there's a ton of them on the market. Will buffer your pH to around 8.3 and raise dKH.

Dose baking soda to raise alk and kalk for ph

 

[Milez803]

i'm gonna try to change another 15 gallon of water today..hoping it would fix the problem..but from what i see..it hasn't help much..for the past 3 weeks

 

[jezzeaepi]

Are you sure your looking at the right numbers? you want your alk to be at 3-4 mql or 7-11 dkh. I highly doubt your alk is at 3dkh, that would be very very difficult to do, and all your corals would be dead.

 

[Scooterman]

What makes you think it is salt in the first place? One thing for sure is when switching salts most probably you should do it in small amounts. In this case though you may be having other issues to consider.

 

[Milez803]

i use the api carbonate hardness test kit.. and it was at 3.dkh..which was very low.. i duno... most of my sps coral have white spot everywhere...

 

[Milez803]

and actually the salt my buddy gave me..smell kind of funny that why i stop using it..

 

[danno14]

I suggest taking a sample of your water into a LFS for testing too.... just to check your baseline. If there IS something funky with the salt (that you can smell), get some carbon running soon!

 

[Milez803]

i actually bought my water to LFS to test it and they said the same thing..low carbonate hardness, but PO4 was a tad bit..... but beside that.. everything seem fine.. that the reason why i stop using the free reef crystal salt and bought some red sea..

 

[kgross]

double post.

Sorry

 

[kgross]

If you alk is that low you have problems (as you know). Baking soda or baked baking soda is a great way to increase alk. As for how much you need, we would need to know how much water is in your system. That would be tank/sump/etc volume, minus volume of sand/rock/etc. Once you have this, or a good guess, you or we can use the reef chemistry calculator http://reef.diesyst.com/chemcalc/chemcalc.html to figure out how much buffer you need to add to your tank.

I would also suggest you post your calcium magnesium and SG values as well so we can make sure there are no other problems.

Kim

 

[jezzeaepi]

i actually bought my water to LFS to test it and they said the same thing..low carbonate hardness, but PO4 was a tad bit..... but beside that.. everything seem fine.. that the reason why i stop using the free reef crystal salt and bought some red sea..

What does "low carbonate hardness" mean? Did they give a number? I am sorry, but I find it very very very unlikely that your alkalinity is at 3dkh after multiple water changes and drippping kalk. I would go so far as to say it is impossible.

 

[Boomer]

I like where Kim is going on this, i.e., Ca++, Mg ++ Salinity. Not mention those white spots on corals. Sounds to me that he is having a snow storm. And I see nothing on pH. 3 dKH wont' kill corals, they just wont' grow much.

Thinkin' oustide the box, I hope to God you did not pour water into salt in a coantiner, as you will get what you got. You pour salt into the water, not the other way around.

And saying everthing is fine means nothing without real numbers

 

[spllbnd2]

I would say we all need to see all of the numbers before coming to conclusions. Everyone should know that we as reef keepers need to test for all parameters before we can justify what we shall dose or how to correct a problem as we do not want to solve one problem just to have another problem too.

Just my 2¢, Cheers,
Alex