awacsmye3
New Member
I have a 40 gal reef tank with 2 fish, 3 corals and a dozen or so hermits. I recently had a hyper-heating situation that raised the water from 78-80 degrees Fahrenheit where it normally sits to 90F. Luckily, nothing except a cone snail died. After replacing my heater, the tank took over two weeks to recover but the corals haven't been as happy as they'd been in the past so I decided to check the water and found that my PH was really low at 7.6 and since the nitrates were around 30ppm, I decided to do a 50% water change. After the water change, the nitrate levels cut in half to 15ppm but the ph was still low. So, I used some Kent Marine Superbuffer dKH to raise the PH level. Following the instructions, I managed to get the PH back up to 8.2 and after a few days of sad-looking coral I decided to run a full spectrum of tests and these are my results:
Temp = 80F
PH = 8.2
NO3= 15ppm
NO2= <0.1 (nil)
PO4= 0ppm
Ca= 250ppm
NH3 = 0
dKH = 18 = 6.43 meq/l = 321.4 ppm CaCO3
Fe = 0
So, my Calcium is almost half what it should be and my Alkalinity is double what it should be. I'm sure my problem lies with using the Superbuffer right after the 50% water change but my question is:
How do I increase the Calcium without raising dKH? And, based on my numbers listed are there any other foreseeable issues? At what level does high dKH start killing a tank?
I feed the fish frozen brine shrimp and flake and the coral are fed bio-plankton and marine plankton once a week on separate days.
Corals are all baseball-sized:
Green Star Polyps
Goniopora
Red Mushroom
Fish:
False Percula Clown
Sailfin Tang
The fish have remained apparently unaffected by all of this. They still seem happy. Then again, the tank (including the coral) did survive an 8 day power outage in last January 's ice storm. At one point, the water was 55F. Tough fish.
Thanks to anyone with some insight.
Temp = 80F
PH = 8.2
NO3= 15ppm
NO2= <0.1 (nil)
PO4= 0ppm
Ca= 250ppm
NH3 = 0
dKH = 18 = 6.43 meq/l = 321.4 ppm CaCO3
Fe = 0
So, my Calcium is almost half what it should be and my Alkalinity is double what it should be. I'm sure my problem lies with using the Superbuffer right after the 50% water change but my question is:
How do I increase the Calcium without raising dKH? And, based on my numbers listed are there any other foreseeable issues? At what level does high dKH start killing a tank?
I feed the fish frozen brine shrimp and flake and the coral are fed bio-plankton and marine plankton once a week on separate days.
Corals are all baseball-sized:
Green Star Polyps
Goniopora
Red Mushroom
Fish:
False Percula Clown
Sailfin Tang
The fish have remained apparently unaffected by all of this. They still seem happy. Then again, the tank (including the coral) did survive an 8 day power outage in last January 's ice storm. At one point, the water was 55F. Tough fish.
Thanks to anyone with some insight.
