HELP!! With Calcium levels ...250

[farnorth]

:scared: Well.... I have had my tank up for about 8 months, I have over 20 corals, they all are big and look good, but have not been growing. I have been checking all of my other levels every few days Ph, Nitrates, Nitrites, Alkalinity, Salinity, etc. Ph always at 8.3, Nitrates 0-10, nitrites 0, Alkalinity 300, Salinity 1.025 and temp 79-81.
When we bought our house it came with a $3k water conditioning treatment system, so I thought since all of my levels were great and the corals looked good, that the calcium could not be that off. I tested it using a hard to read calcium test and it looked in the 200's, so I got a califert and it says 250 :scared:
Any suggestions?? Should I just start buying buckets of iodine or purple up? My water tested straight out of the tap says I have about 0 calcium, I also have a water softner. HELP!!!

 

[krazekajin]

I have asked these questions several times as a new hobbiest and I finanlly have gotten to understand. The first thing is to check out my thread and really read the article that is linked at the beginning.
https://forums.saltwaterfish.com/t/267842/please-help-me-with-my-alk-and-calcium-levels-please-please-please
The second thing is that your calcium and alkinlinty must be balanced. So we know that you have low calcium but what is your alk at?
After reading the article, if you need to get your calcium up then there are several Calcium only addtivtes that you can drip into your tank.
read the article and then respond back and we can chat some more.

 

[maxalmon]

What type of corals do you have? Do you have any clams? < they can suck the calcium out of your tank. What type of salt and how often do you perform water changes? Consider using the B-Ionic two part system, worked wonders on my tanks

 

[farnorth]

Thanks for the replies! The article was very intersting, but it seemed like all it said was to use supplements to get my calcium level up since I am in level 3, then just make sure in the future that I used kalk to add top off? My alkalinity is at 300ppm and Ph at 8.3, so they are near perfect.
I was using instant ocean, then just recently switched to try aquatic gardens. I do about 20% every month and have a 100 gallon. No matter what salt I use though, won't my calcium levels be low since my water has no calcium or does the salt put enough in the water to make it at 400? I have not heard about that two part system, what does that do?
Thanks!

 

[farnorth]

Oh... I don't have any clams I have a frogspawn, zoos, gorgonians, candy canes, bubble, brain, kenya tree, sinularia, colt... I think thats it.

 

[farnorth]

Can I get any more help on this?

 

[farslayer]

Your salt should be adding enough calcium, but in your case that may not be quite enough. I use Instant Ocean and have great success, only $14 a bag at my LFS. What I would do is measure calcium before a water change, then measure immediately after and see what the net effect is (don't forget you'll need to compute ratios in change of calcium/gallons changed). If your calcium goes up after the water change, great! Now, measure it every day for a week and see if it is going down. If so, consider either dosing with calcium or getting a drip system in place.

 

[azfishgal]

Kents Turbo Calcium would get your calcium up, but like one post said, you need to balance your Calcium and alk. I use Tropic Marin and my calcium tests at 400 before adding the water to my tank, but I do add Superbuffer-dkh because my pH and alk is a little low. Once it's in my tank I test to see how long I can go without adding my buffer and calcium. I'm still working on getting a consistent schedule, but at the moment I usually have to add buffer more often than calcium (especially after I switched from Liquid Calcium to Turbo Calcium). I try and shoot for a alk/Calcium reading of 3.0/420 to 3.5/430. I was a little confused on your alk reading being 300? :notsure: Did you mean 3.0? (You might have a different kind of test.) Once you get your tank where it needs to be then test every day and find out when your calcium and alk/ph starts to drop, then after a few weeks you should get a handle on how often you need to add calcium and buffer. A good indicator is you'll start to see some purple coraline growing. Everyones tank is different because of their stock of corals.
Also, IMO you should do more water changes, at 10% every two weeks. If nothing else it will add your trace elements more often to your tank. Of course everyone has there own opinion on this, but I have found less goes wrong with more frequent water changes.

 

[farnorth]

Thanks guys, I think I got the clarity I needed. Now it makes more sense why people do water changes every week or two to maintain the calcium, I thought it was just in general to give the fish new "clean" water.

That is one other reason I was not too worried about my calcium, all of my rock is FULL of purple and pink coraline algae. I will check on this and post again, hopefully this will help someone else as well. For now I am going to try a 20% water change this week, then a 10% for two more weeks and keep monitoring the calcium/Alkalinity/I think then I will be able to have a good baseline.