Raising Ca levels

[minyee]

Hi everyone. I have a 90g deep, 100# lr, ssb. Tank has been up since January. First corals (lps & zoos) went in about 3 weeks ago. Using IO salt, RO/DI, 10g water changes every other week. 65w PCs, 2 10k, 2 atnic. Coralife skimmer.

My readings (salifert tests) are:
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 0
Ammonia 0
ph 8.4
Alk normal
s.g. 1.024
Ca 350
temp 78.6

My zoos aren't opening up & I lost a hammer coral last week. So decided to start dosing Ca hoping that it would help. Using C-Balance and have been dosing 5ml per 20 g of each part A & B for the last three days. But Ca levels have not budged from 350. Am I really supposed to keep dosing every day until I see a change? Should I up the dosage? Any other recommendations? I was hoping not to have to do kalk or have to dose a million thingssince it seems like so much more work & money.

Thanks. Minyee

 

[aaron23]

Check your Mg levels. That can be the cause of your problems

 

[meschaefer]

A couple of observations.

1. It has been a long time since I have dosed a two part, but my general recollection is that it will help you maintain your current levels, but is really not that good for boosting your levels. There are a couple of products out there designed to boost your calcium levels as opposed to maintaining them, such as turbocalcium by Kent (???). Many people add it to their "fresh" salt water, when doing a water change.

2. Dosing Kalk seems so much easier and less expensive than dosing a two part. Since you need to add top off water anyway, get your self some pickling lime and top off with kalk water instead. Pickling lime is cheap and can be found on line (Ball and Mrs. Wages are two companies), you just mix it into your make up water, and top off with that.

 

[marrone]

What is your Alk levels, as that will have an effect on your ability to raise your Cal. Check out the link below as it will give you an understanding on Alk & Cal and how to get them to the right levels.

If you Alk is ok what you probably want to do it get Tubro Cal and use that to boost you Cal to the correct level. After that you can dose with the 2 parts to keep it at the correct levels, depending on the amount of corals in your tank you may have to dose more to keep the levels up.

As for your corals, how close are they to the lights and do you have heavy flow on them. Some corals like Hammer don't like heavy flow on them and this could cause them to not open and die.

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/nov2002/chem.htm

 

[Deanos]

Check your Mg levels.

When you say ALK is normal, what is its level?

Like Aaron said, check magnesium!! Once you've determined that Mg levels fall within normal parameters, use this Reef Chemistry Calculator to determine how much of a calcium additive to use on your tank.

 

[ezee]

minyee,

I would put your limited lights as one of the key suspects, likely even before the CA. The lights you have are fairly weak for a 90 gallon (deep?) tank.

E

 

[Tonyscoots84]

A couple of observations.
2. Dosing Kalk seems so much easier and less expensive than dosing a two part. Since you need to add top off water anyway, get your self some pickling lime and top off with kalk water instead. Pickling lime is cheap and can be found on line (Ball and Mrs. Wages are two companies), you just mix it into your make up water, and top off with that.

just an addon to wat meschaefer said, do not dose all of it at once if you take this route.... please use the drip method which add its very slowely over a period of time....

 

[minyee]

Hmm...oops Red Sea tests not Salifert. Alk is dead middle normal btw 1.7-2.8 so about 2.2 The Ca test came with a bottle of licquid Ca so I'll use that until I can get my hands on the turbo Ca that someone recommended. I'll also read up on using kalk.

As for the lights Hubby wanted to do fowlr (hence the choice of lights) but I'm dragging him and his wallet in to reefing. So probably no new lights for awhile. I knew the lights were an issue so I placed the hammer, frogspawn and blastos high up. Everything was expanding and seemed happy. The frogspawn and blastos look great...really plump and eating. I moved the hammer just a little bit lower and it started to decline so I moved it back up. Maybe too late.

The zoos and gsp are on the bottom of the tank. The gsp opens up nicely but not the zoos. Should I move them up..i thought they didn't need much light? I figured the hermits were just bugging them too much.

Anyway thanks for all the suggestions.

Minyee

 

[marrone]

The Alk sounds low, it should be higer than 2.2, in the 3.0-3.5 range. Probably why your having trouble raising the Cal.

I would move the zoo's up higher and see if the open. Blasto Wellsi actually don't like a lot of light.

Why type of Hammer did you have branching, with many heads, or a wall type, where you have one long coral. With the wall type you can have problems with part of the coral and the whole thing may go.

 

[meschaefer]

just an addon to wat meschaefer said, do not dose all of it at once if you take this route.... please use the drip method which add its very slowely over a period of time....

Yea... I should have mentioned that. Adding it all at once is a sure way to kill everything. If you go over to talkingreef.com, he explains how to make a doser real easy. there is even video of him making it.

 

[House of Laughter]

definately an alk problem - classic indicators - improper Mg won't kill LPS, they just won't grow as fast in building skeleton.

House

 

[minyee]

Thanks for everyone's input. I'll have to buy that Mg test. And I'll read up more on Alk levels as well as using kalk. I have very little corraline (well, lots of green only) so figuring this out will probably help that too.

The hammer was non-branching and was looking good for 2 weeks before it declined. Hopefully when I figure all this out and get all the levels where they should be I'll try another one.

Minyee