what the heck has happened here.

[ddc0715]

ok maybe a long post I will try and keep it short.tanks been fine as wine for many moons..
1. preformed my monthly wc Monday.

2. Tuesday morning major BB bloom.was clearing up by the evening.

3. this morning woke to what appears to be heavy white film on the glass.so thick it was hard to see into the tank.looked like someone spray painted my glass durning the night.

4. went to scrapping of and it's hard as a rock. appears to be ca build up not sure. it was so hard my glass scrapper would not touch it. had to use my long handle scraper

5. wcs are po4 .24, alk 8.25,ph 8,ca 425,mg 1426,sal 35, I have an apex with a trident.

6. I refilled my alk mix on Monday 1 gallon and this morning it's empty....2 day later. was going to refill my ca mix today because I was low.

7. the pic show this mornings filter floss on the left compared to Mondays flosspad, you can see the water is just milky.and the water after I have removed the hard film.

not sure what has happened. when all i preformed was a wc.the corals are fine. fish are fine. it looks like it has snow in my tank. all the rocks are solid white in color (not bleached).I will fill in the gaps as the questions come. I will be posting to brs as well for answer. because I'm traveling out of town for a week today and need answers or solutions asap my wife said FIX THIS BEFORE YOU LEAVE. I'm thinking preforming another WC.

 

[RedoubtReef]

sorry, what's a 'BB bloom'?

 

[vetteguy53081]

Lots of precipitation likely from slk
S as lido po4 quite high (you want .04 -.06 range)
Do a manual alk test and see what reading you get versus trident

 

[vetteguy53081]

sorry, what's a 'BB bloom'?

Bacterial

 

[RedoubtReef]

Bacterial

thanks

 

[ddc0715]

yes BB(benifical bactria). I to am think precip.but why after a WC. LORD KNOWS IVE DONE 100s of those with out this problem. I have no spare testing kit. so I will be sending the wife to the lfs after she drops me off at the airport. or maybe before.also agree po4 to high but we just returned from a 2week vaction and I was not around to keep it in line. thus the reason for the wc

 

[Smoke-Town]

Is your apex showing alk and ph spike? Looks like the doser dosed all your kalk in at once... nothing abnormal in the graphs from Sunday through Wednesday?

 

[ddc0715]

You can see where i performed the wc on Monday, then all hell breaks loss 2.0 alk spikes up and down not sure what's happing with the ca. these graphs are odd. but based on what I'm seeing all is ok i just have a white tank instead of a purple coralline tank now.. I mean how was i able to dump 1 gallon of soda ash and about 1/8 gallon of ca via the trident and Neptune dos's into this tank with no ill effects? if the dosing is controlled by trident testing.

 

[reefbandit]

If you dumped a gallon of alk its probably so high the test kit isn't working properly or it reacted with water somehow and created the hard shell you had to scrape off and somehow solidified and didn't affect your alk level.

 

[ddc0715]

If you dumped a gallon of alk its probably so high the test kit isn't working properly or it reacted with water somehow and created the hard shell you had to scrape off and somehow solidified and didn't affect your alk level.

i did not do it the automation did it. lol this has happened once before ( od) i wonder if one of my Neptune dos pumps is succumbing to old age.

 

[Smoke-Town]

Ph spike to nearly 9.0 it looks like. And is that your calcium jumping from 400 up to 600ppm after that water change? Then about 36 hours later drops down to under 400? My guess still goes to a controller/doser malfunction dumping the entire gallon of kalkwasser in on a single go then rapidly precipitating to make that white stuff... I would have expected to see a higher alkalinity spike than 11 dkh though if it affected the calcium that heavily. Idk. I don't own an apex so maybe I'm reading that all wrong.

Maybe run some tests on a fresh batch of saltwater to see if it's a bad batch that has too much calcium in it or something

 

[mdb_talon]

I would have expected to see a higher alkalinity spike than 11 dkh though if it affected the calcium that heavily

Presumably it was kept down because of the precipitation. I mean wow thats a lot of precip

 

[ddc0715]

everything seems to have calmed down..im wondering if I should control the dose pumps using the advance settings instead of trident test controlled... for example if alk >10 then of, if alk <9.0 then on.. not sure if this is a good idea or not.

 

[ddc0715]

so I have an update.... seems every since this event happend. I have low/acceptable alk levels.

i have been in a long distance fight to get my alk to stay with in a 7-8dkh range and flirting with 6.95

my standard dosing is 2000mls of kalk and 200 mls of soda ash/trace element mix. which keep me at a 8-9dkh level

so why I'm I now at a lower dkh level and dosing the same amount? post precip event?.

I'm out of town and my wife is dosing an addition 150 mls of soda ash daily to keep me in the 7-8 dkh range...thanks dear..

is the answer as simple as increase my started dosing?
could my trident have been affect by the precip event affecting the tests?
can I clean the trident to insure their is no precip in it?
Whats happened to my dkh?why so low now?
wife says the tank looks amazing.

I'm out of town so I can not see if there is massive coral growth.
todays levels
levels day before the event were
alk- 8.65
ca- 425
mg- 1407

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

After a precipitation event, the system will be unusually prone to more precipitation due to the fresh calcium carbonate surfaces acting as seed crystals for more precipitation. It takes time for organics, magnesium and phosphate to get into those surfaces and block more precipitation.

 

[ddc0715]

so there is no instant solution other than just wait?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

so there is no instant solution other than just wait?

This is my standard recommendation:


1. Stop all efforts to boost pH.
2. Stop dosing alk for a bit and let it decline.
3. Reduce pH by switching to a low pH alk mix like sodium bicarbonate, or a calcium organic such as Tropic Marin All for Reef.
4. Ensure magnesium is normal to high.
5. Keep organics and phosphate on the high side.

After a few days of not dosing alk, restart slowly, adding additives to a very high flow area so it mixes in fast.

 

[ddc0715]

This is my standard recommendation:


1. Stop all efforts to boost pH.
2. Stop dosing alk for a bit and let it decline.
3. Reduce pH by switching to a low pH alk mix like sodium bicarbonate, or a calcium organic such as Tropic Marin All for Reef.
4. Ensure magnesium is normal to high.
5. Keep organics and phosphate on the high side.

After a few days of not dosing alk, restart slowly, adding additives to a very high flow area so it mixes in fast.

ok so
1. im not sure what you mean by this. turning off my skimmer (scrubbing outside air), and stopping my apex-controlled kalk and alk doser is the only option i have here.
2. easy enough but how of a decline is to low? 5, 4, 3 dkh?
3. i can switch to baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) that's simple
4. mag is normal. easy enough
5. i will start overfeeding, that too is easy enough.

this seems odd. only because its new to me

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

ok so
1. im not sure what you mean by this. turning off my skimmer (scrubbing outside air), and stopping my apex-controlled kalk and alk doser is the only option i have here.
2. easy enough but how of a decline is to low? 5, 4, 3 dkh?
3. i can switch to baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) that's simple
4. mag is normal. easy enough
5. i will start overfeeding, that too is easy enough.

this seems odd. only because its new to me

I'd keep skimmer, but remove the scrubber for a few days. No need to overfeed. Don't let alk get below 6.5 dKH, IMO.

 

[ddc0715]

the problem was user error in the avance coding