Barely keeping up w/ Alk in New Tank

[twentyleagues]

I used Marco rocks and (dry) Caribsea araganite sand. No live rock. And yes, I am running a reefmat and a skimmer. If I turn off the skimmer, it gets cloudy (bacteria bloom?) within a day.

Are you seeing any hardening of the sand? Also check the heaters and if possible pump impeller shafts for calcium deposits. You may be having some precipitation. Have you checked calcium levels?

 

[MySoCalReef]

Are you seeing any hardening of the sand? Also check the heaters and if possible pump impeller shafts for calcium deposits. You may be having some precipitation. Have you checked calcium levels?

I don’t see any deposits. I’ll check the sand and calcium when I get home this afternoon. I haven’t been checking it because I don’t really have anything that would use it.

 

[Bartanto]

I don’t see any deposits. I’ll check the sand and calcium when I get home this afternoon. I haven’t been checking it because I don’t really have anything that would use it.

In my experience I didn’t have anything ‘using’ the Alk either, but it was precipitating out, forming hard sand on the edge of, around and under larger rock work. For the longest time I didn’t notice when checking the sand as I was working the Alk depletion issue…but I’m still finding ‘sand rocks’ to this day (and remove them). A 5 week old system w/ Marco and Caribsea plus what ever bottle bac was used is ripe for precipitation as the sand bed is in its baby infancy in regards being covered/colonized with good bac which inhibits precipitation (to me this is all part of the initial maturing of the system). I champion letting the tank do its thing - all the dosing and additives are just more inputs that postpone the tank finding a natural balance this early on.

 

[BryanM]

Hmm, most responses here are focused on the stated problem with just a couple talking about the newness of the tank.

It seems quite odd to me to have alk dropping that fast in a new tank. I think I'd get a different test kit to verify first off... and I'd be trying to figure out what the alk consumer is, if it is indeed dropping this fast.

Unless you're specifically going for an ultra low nutrient system I wouldn't be concerned with phosphates even in the .5 range..... I know that's not a popular opinion generally, but you can search and find plenty of tanks that are gorgeous with higher numbers. Zeros for nitrates and phosphates cause way more problems and its a myth that having high numbers here creates algae.

 

[PotatoPig]

Some comments and observations:

1. Once you use all your Alk dosing supply search in here for DIY alkalinity supplements. Baking Soda is much much cheaper than anything branded for reef use.

2. Nitrates at 15 should be fine for almost any tank. Several folks here run thriving reefs with nitrates between 2-4 times that value. Barring an ULNS no action is required from you on nitrates here.

3. Double check your salinity with a calibrated salt mix. I don’t have the link handy but search on the chemistry forum for guides on how to make this. (I once had major issues trying to keep my calcium and alk up, turned out the problem was my refractometer was mis calibrated and I was running salinity at about 28ppm)