SPS Healthy & Colorful but Not Growing, Zoas Partially Closed - Ca, Mg, Alk Barely Decline. Why?
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@Perry sounds like you have a solid solution.
I just like to point out pitfalls when using any type of system or equipment cause they all have them. One thing I like about salt water aquariums is fitting things together to minimize problems. It is very challenging
Yes sir!
Challenging indeed
My current setup is nothing to write home about, and after struggles, finally decided to try something completely different to stay in the hobby. Too many issues to discuss here, don't want to derail thread, but trying to move to mire natural methods, less technology, lol.
Best to you, and especially OP on the sps journey, 15 years of that, maybe again one day, if the setting is proper
sgrosenb
Active Member
This is fascinating! Thank you so much @HuduVudu and @Perry for your insight. On first glance, this all makes so much sense. I work from home, and my wife stays home, so we are in the house (I am actually in the fish tank room) all day every day. Combine that with the kids being home all the time from COVID for the past 4-5 months and it would make total sense that, living in FL with AC running non-stop, I would have elevated CO2.@sgrosenb as I suspected.
So, some basic chemistry first.
CO2 goes into solution and when it's concentration gets high enough it starts to form carbonic acid (H2CO3). This then goes further to form bicarbonate (HCO3-). This can all be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonic_acid
This reaction can go forward and backward. This is the same premise that Calcium Reactors are based on. When you increase the CO2 around your tank you will create more acid as described above thus driving the PH down. The interesting tricky part is that the zooxanthellae in the coral tissue that are responsible for energy production require CO2 as they are a plant, but there is a secondary mechanism that is responsible for calcification (which I am not as clear on) that requires CO3 for skeletal growth.
As I mentioned before Alk tests aren't as they seem. You measure both CO3 (needed) and HCO3- (illusory). The interesting thing is that if you use a base you can bind out the acid (H-) into water and then your illusory bicarbonate becomes needed carbonate which is usable by the corals.
I also want to point out too, when you dose soda ash (NaCO3) you are indeed dosing CO3 but you are also dosing Na into your tank. Doing this is going to throw off your NaCl (salt) balance. This balance is essential to maintain in a salt water aquarium. Because we have to send out water samples to get balance numbers this makes keeping NaCl in the proper balance important. That said when you dose you must dose both CaCl and NaCO3. Even this over time will cause problems for two reasons; first the keeping the balance between the Na and the Cl is difficult because of the consumption of CO3 by the biological filter, second the Na and the Cl concentration will become greater in the solution because the Ca and CO3 are being consumed. Read up on Balling method for details on this mechanism. I don't believe that our machines can truly keep these balanced correctly. That is why if you are dosing it is imperative that you water change. I don't know how long or how much you were dosing in the beginning, but if enough it could have thrown your water chemistry. It is good that you do water changes perhaps you might want to up them a bit to get any imbalances corrected. Note: I can't understand why Triton doesn't test for Cl this is strange to me. ATI does FYI.
So what to do. Leave your house all the time so your PH stays stable
I hope that this can bring some clarity to the problem that you are having.
I just want to make sure I'm clear on what you're recommending for next steps. If I'm hearing you right, it sounds like you recommend the following:
- Perform frequent water changes to balance out any imbalances
- Use a CO2 scrubber to remove excess CO2 (I saw the one on BRS - I will buy that, along with the media)
- When alkalinity declines, use kalkwasser to increase it. (this one I don't fully understand - I need to read up on kalkwasser. Essentially can I just dose this? I have plenty of dosing heads available to dose whatever is needed)
- Monitor O2 to ensure that it does not get too low (I'm not sure how to do this - is there any type of test I can do?)
This is exciting. I'm actually feeling like this may be a solution that I haven't visited yet. Thanks so much.
what percent water change would you recommend ? for ridding systems out of the 2 part end by product ? and weekly or bi weekly?@sgrosenb as I suspected.
So, some basic chemistry first.
CO2 goes into solution and when it's concentration gets high enough it starts to form carbonic acid (H2CO3). This then goes further to form bicarbonate (HCO3-). This can all be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonic_acid
This reaction can go forward and backward. This is the same premise that Calcium Reactors are based on. When you increase the CO2 around your tank you will create more acid as described above thus driving the PH down. The interesting tricky part is that the zooxanthellae in the coral tissue that are responsible for energy production require CO2 as they are a plant, but there is a secondary mechanism that is responsible for calcification (which I am not as clear on) that requires CO3 for skeletal growth.
As I mentioned before Alk tests aren't as they seem. You measure both CO3 (needed) and HCO3- (illusory). The interesting thing is that if you use a base you can bind out the acid (H-) into water and then your illusory bicarbonate becomes needed carbonate which is usable by the corals.
I also want to point out too, when you dose soda ash (NaCO3) you are indeed dosing CO3 but you are also dosing Na into your tank. Doing this is going to throw off your NaCl (salt) balance. This balance is essential to maintain in a salt water aquarium. Because we have to send out water samples to get balance numbers this makes keeping NaCl in the proper balance important. That said when you dose you must dose both CaCl and NaCO3. Even this over time will cause problems for two reasons; first the keeping the balance between the Na and the Cl is difficult because of the consumption of CO3 by the biological filter, second the Na and the Cl concentration will become greater in the solution because the Ca and CO3 are being consumed. Read up on Balling method for details on this mechanism. I don't believe that our machines can truly keep these balanced correctly. That is why if you are dosing it is imperative that you water change. I don't know how long or how much you were dosing in the beginning, but if enough it could have thrown your water chemistry. It is good that you do water changes perhaps you might want to up them a bit to get any imbalances corrected. Note: I can't understand why Triton doesn't test for Cl this is strange to me. ATI does FYI.
So what to do. Leave your house all the time so your PH stays stable
I hope that this can bring some clarity to the problem that you are having.
HuduVudu
2500 Club Member
Yes, this is only because I am not sure what you are starting with it depends how much soda ash that you used when you first started. You have changed a lot of water since then, but just to make sure. Once you start using the kalkwasser you won't need to worry about the balance. I suggest getting a reactor for kalkwasser additions. Use a dosing pump to move water through the reactor at a predictable rate. If you have an ATO let it take up the slack on the days when there is a lot of evap.
Yes, be aware of the pitfalls that I noted. @Perry made a good point about an algal scrubber. This will help with O2 in the tank. Also keep in mind the elevated CO2 and depressed O2 are bad for you and your family also
When you can run open the windows or as often as you can air out the house.See first question. Here is my set up.
Salifert does make a test but I find it to be not granular enough. There are other tests but they are expensive. I wouldn't mess with them. Use the CO2 (PH) as proxy to guess at O2. It's biology not rocket science
Also running some sort of algal scrubber will help with your O2 levels. Do research on scrubbers, there are pitfalls there too. If your bed goes asexual that can be disastrous if your creatures are depending on the O2 generated.I certainly hope so this hobby can be incredibly frustrating because there are so many moving parts.
HuduVudu
2500 Club Member
Two part is tricky. It depends on how much you are dosing, how much you are feeding (alk depression from aerobic function), and how accurate that you are. I would say roughly 10-20% weekly. Please know you can NOT stop the water changes. There can be no laziness here. This is why I eschew this form of mineralization.
One thing that you can do to help make this process a bit easier is to use kalkwasser as a way to cut back on how much you are dosing. The less two part the smaller the equilibrium issues the better for your creatures. My 2 cents.
Crustaceon
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2-part can be tricky as described above. I ran it for a while, switched to kalkwasser and noticed immediate benefits from it. One thing I did notice with kalk was that it precipitated easily when I dosed it to my sump chamber before adding a circulation pump. After adding the pump, no problems. I was using a jebao four channel doser for this and was pumping an obscene amount of kalk solution through channel one every hour. I’m amazed it didn’t fail after a few months of this! I eventually went to a calcium reactor but in all honesty, I think I’d probably see even better results by going back to dosing kalk solution and using something like a kamoer fx-stp. Continuous dosed kalkwasser is the shizz.
sgrosenb
Active Member
Thanks @HuduVudu you are a wealth of knowledge. One last question as I think through this - I have a calcium reactor and everything that goes along with it (CO2 tank, regulatory with solenoid, etc) that I never set up. Would this be something I could utilize at all before buying a kalkwasser setup?Yes, this is only because I am not sure what you are starting with it depends how much soda ash that you used when you first started. You have changed a lot of water since then, but just to make sure. Once you start using the kalkwasser you won't need to worry about the balance. I suggest getting a reactor for kalkwasser additions. Use a dosing pump to move water through the reactor at a predictable rate. If you have an ATO let it take up the slack on the days when there is a lot of evap.
Yes, be aware of the pitfalls that I noted. @Perry made a good point about an algal scrubber. This will help with O2 in the tank. Also keep in mind the elevated CO2 and depressed O2 are bad for you and your family also
See first question. Here is my set up.
Salifert does make a test but I find it to be not granular enough. There are other tests but they are expensive. I wouldn't mess with them. Use the CO2 (PH) as proxy to guess at O2. It's biology not rocket science
I certainly hope so this hobby can be incredibly frustrating because there are so many moving parts.
HuduVudu
2500 Club Member
Hmmm. This is a can of worms. Short answer ... wait until your Alk requirements push you for more after the kalk. So no, use the kalkwasser set up first.
Here is why ... when you use a Calcium Reactor you are going to find that your PH will be depressed because of the above conversation. Remember the reactor is using CO2 to depress the PH to levels that will dissolve the CaCO3 media (carbonic acid). What you will find is that CO2 is not particularly easy to out gas. Typical reactors run between 6.5 and 6.9 PH to achieve their goals. There are arguments for and against running higher and lower. I will leave it to you to discover these. Either way you will have a constant low PH drip into your tank. I have done some experiments on how to out gas CO2 from salt water, but trust me when I say it is ugly and dirty. One very good way though to deal with the low PH is a kalkwasser drip, this also has the added benefit of binding bicarbonate into usable carbonate for the tank. So it is very common for people that use Calcium Reactors to supplement with kalkwasser to stablize their PH. Which is why I am suggesting to go with the kalkwasser first, because especially if you go down the Calcium Reactor route you are probably going to end up with one anyway.
sgrosenb
Active Member
Understood. I am close to the finish line on what needs to be done, but I just want to make sure I have it all down. It sounds like my main goal is to lower CO2. Both a CO2 scrubber and kalkwasser will achieve that if I understand it correctly. But a CO2 scrubber comes with drawbacks. Final questions before I go and buy all this stuff - would a plausible solution instead of the CO2 scrubber be for me to get some 3/8" tubing and have my skimmer pull air from the outside? I don't have a strong working knowledge of all this but that is one suggestion I have seen as I research this.
My only drawback to trying to lower CO2 is that I'm now talking about getting three reactors: CO2, Kalk and Algae. That is quite the addition of variables, etc and risks (low O2). I've tried to stick with the "keep it simple" approach with minimal variables, but it sounds like I don't have many options. Unfortunately, opening my windows twice per day would be tough in the 95 degree humid heat... As always, thanks again for everyone's help and valuable insight.
HuduVudu
2500 Club Member
The problem with this solution is that there is no return to the outside air. The skimmer draws the air in through the venturi but then just simply out gasses the outside air into the house hoping that the positive pressure will push the higher CO2 air out of the house through other means (cracks, open doors, unsealed areas). This is a pretty poor way of dealing with things.
I one hundred percent agree with you. This is the exact reason why SPS tanks are difficult. The variables and chance of failure are very high and everything that you do in a SPS tank is mitigating these problems.
The solution you have chosen for me is a fine short term solution, but you might want to start to look to work on solving these problems and providing longer term simpler solutions. I get the humidity heat thing that is why I only run my big fan to air the house once a day for about 30 minutes usually very late at night when it is cooler (lol 85 degrees). This is a less than ideal solution. That is why I am looking at a whole house solution using plants so that I can have clean air and not suffer from lack of circulation. Here is my monster:
It is currently a test but I am hopeful.
Here is what got me down this path
Also you can hold off on the algal scrubber for a while. This is only if you need more O2 for the tank because your fish are distressed. If you keep the load down you should be good. Just note though that if things start to go over the edge you will have no back up. Just something to be aware of.
sgrosenb
Active Member
Understood - thanks @HuduVudu. That'd be awesome if the plants can actually work. I'll follow along wtih you to see.
For now, I'm going to order the CO2 scrubber and hope for the best on O2. Also a note on the kalkwasser - I feel as though I'm in this chicken-and-egg scenario with dosing alk, calcium, etc - my alkalinity continues to not decline (it has actually increased slightly over the past week) and so I really don't have much in the way of need to dose anything. Is the hope that the lower CO2 decreases alkalinity (or at least the measured alkalinity via my KH Director and Triton), which then allows me to dose Kalkwasser, which then gets me back in the normal swing of things? I'm pretty sure that's my last question Thanks.
For now, I'm going to order the CO2 scrubber and hope for the best on O2. Also a note on the kalkwasser - I feel as though I'm in this chicken-and-egg scenario with dosing alk, calcium, etc - my alkalinity continues to not decline (it has actually increased slightly over the past week) and so I really don't have much in the way of need to dose anything. Is the hope that the lower CO2 decreases alkalinity (or at least the measured alkalinity via my KH Director and Triton), which then allows me to dose Kalkwasser, which then gets me back in the normal swing of things? I'm pretty sure that's my last question
Thanks.
HuduVudu
2500 Club Member
Correct.
A poster further up made some good points about corals. It takes them a little to recover from their previous environments and adapt to yours. My experience is the same, and to add further when they decide they are going to go they go. Make sure you have a plan when that comes into play, which hopefully it does.
sgrosenb
Active Member
Thanks so much @HuduVudu and everyone else. I ordered a CO2 Scrubber and will be switching to kalkwasser shortly. I will report back with what I find!Correct.
A poster further up made some good points about corals. It takes them a little to recover from their previous environments and adapt to yours. My experience is the same, and to add further when they decide they are going to go they go. Make sure you have a plan when that comes into play, which hopefully it does.
sgrosenb
Active Member
Small update - got my ICP test result back this evening. Nothing seems to be too out of the ordinary on this one. I'm waiting for the ATI result which I think will be more comprehensve.
melanotaenia
Well-Known Member
Your tank is still relatively new for SPS and I think you need to give them, and your tank, a little more time, and to be patient. I think you will start to see growth soon; since you have live rock, the biodiversity should be there for them to start doing well soon.
HuduVudu
2500 Club Member
Looks like the Na and Cl are in balance.Small update - got my ICP test result back this evening. Nothing seems to be too out of the ordinary on this one. I'm waiting for the ATI result which I think will be more comprehensve.
sgrosenb
Active Member
Another small update - @HuduVudu I braved the elements and opened up my windows last night and this morning like you suggested. It clearly had an effect on pH as you can see on the chart below. Is this what you suspected? If so, hopefully that would cause my alkalinity to decline and make my corals happier... In lieu of opening windows each day, hopefully a CO2 scrubber that I ordered will have the same impact.
Chart of pH. Normally it would decline back down to 8.0 at nigh; it only declined to 8.2.
Chart of pH. Normally it would decline back down to 8.0 at nigh; it only declined to 8.2.
HuduVudu
2500 Club Member
Yes.
I don't think that it will have the same impact, but I am sure it will have an impact. When things cool down or when you think you can get away with it you should open the window for a 24 hour period. That is always entertaining to watch on the PH graph
Also don't forget to use fans to move air through the house to maximize the effect of your opening the windows. Think of your house as a column of air like your fish tank is a column of water and the fan is a power head. I use a large floor fan that I converted to push air out one window thus pulling air in through all of the windows that I have open. The link above helps you calculate how long you should do this.
I think that house plants as described in the video above are the correct long term path, but I haven't traveled that path to help enlighten as to the benefits and pitfalls. I thought about the sump "refugium" solution but my thought is why not use that light (and energy) on terrestrial plants that are going to be more efficient at CO2 reduction and O2 replenishment, and provided benefit to me and my family not just the aquarium. Just my thoughts.
You are going to need to try to keep this going long term so that the tank will benefit. You could start a very small drip with the kalkwasser ... say 500ml per day to try and bind some of the bicarbonate. Another thought too is that you can some fast growing "weed" corals to help kick things in the butt. Purple stylo and birds nest are good candidates here. Make sure you don't put them on things you want to keep because they will grow fast once they get through the acclimation stage and you may not want to keep them. They are hungry devils.
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