I want to dose 2-part equally, but my Ca is too high

[smiley]

Hello, I have a 2 week old 60 gallon and my salt mix gave my high Ca and average Alk from the beggining ( 530 ppm and 7 dkh). My Alk had dropped to 6 dkh and my Ca is about the same. According to R.Holmes-Farley 2-part should be dosed equally. But in my case the Ca is just too high. So I've been dosing a small amount of the baked baking soda part of the 2-part maintaining alk at 8.5 and stable...the Ca is still over 500 ppm. I checked with an api and salifert test kit to be sure, they both read the same. My other params. Are ph 8.2, salinty 1.026 , mg 1275 temp. 78. What should I do? Thanks.

 

[TheSherm]

Has your tank cycled yet? I use ESV 2 part and dose more alk than cal daily because my tank requires a greater alk dose to keep things even. I dont know about the product you are dosing

 

[CHEMCHEF]

Cal & alk are a fine balance. Magnesium also plays a big role in this. If your tank is only 2 weeks old I would assume that you dont have corals yet.
You only need to dose if you have corals that are using it up.
My advice is to just keep monitoring your levels. They are certainly in the ball park.

 

[smiley]

The thing is, according to the 2-part dosing system of Randy Holmes-Farley (I respect this person and his insights into reef chemistry very much) I should dose the Ca and Alk of his 2-part recipe equally and when the gallon jugs are empty add the Mg part. With my current situation I will have used up the Alk part long before the Ca part. There is only LR in my tank, and I've used this system before without the unbalance.

 

[mbg75]

The thing is, according to the 2-part dosing system of Randy Holmes-Farley (I respect this person and his insights into reef chemistry very much) I should dose the Ca and Alk of his 2-part recipe equally and when the gallon jugs are empty add the Mg part. With my current situation I will have used up the Alk part long before the Ca part. There is only LR in my tank, and I've used this system before without the unbalance.

If there are no corals, u shouldn't need to dose.

Sent from my ADR6300 using Tapatalk

 

[Boomer]

What should I do? Thanks.

Who's salt are you using ?

Randy Holmes-Farley

Will tell you the same thing I will. If the Ca++ is way to high just dose using bake baking soda, not the two-part Alk till the Ca++ comes down. Since your pH is not low and the Alk is then use just baking soda.

If there are no corals, u shouldn't need to dose.

Agreed but get it in line before you add animals.

 

[Paolissimo]

What salt are you using??? I had/have (not using it anymore)a batch of Instant Ocean that gave me high reading of Calcium. After investigating more I found out that IO had a bad batch of salt shipped to store, and I guess i was "lucky" enough to buy it. Switched to ESV salt since then.