High Alk with new kit

[Mikey Donuts]

Hello,
I just got a new Elos Alk kit and my mixed reef tested at 16. I also tested my softie reef and the kit showed 19. The Elos kit I had been using previously and which I finished earlier this week showed 10 on my mixed reef and 8 on my softie reef one week ago. I have been using a litermeter to dose randys two part for months with no problems. I'm currently dosing 120ml of both Alk and Ca daily on my 200 gallon mixed system and 20 ml daily on my 34 gallon softie. I've also been dosing Mg fairly heavily. Ca in both tanks tested about 450 tonight. All of my corals look good with no signs of stress. Pretty much all of my water parameters have been stable for quite a while. I haven't changed anything in the past couple of months except for normal water changes. Everything was great until tonight's alk test. I'm thinking the kit may be bad. Any ideas?

Thanks,
Mike

[Mikey Donuts]

I just mixed up a new batch of salt using Reef Crystals and it tests at 18 for alk. PH for both tanks is 8.3.

[elosusa]

1 drop= .05 kh on the new kit. To get to 1kh per drop you can use 2.5ml of water instead of 5. The card in the test kit should say:
1drop=0.5kh. Sorry for the confusion.

[Mikey Donuts]

Ahhh!! Thanks very much Jesse! I'm much happier with readings of 8 and 9.5 :). I was obviously using the old 1 drop=1KH. You guys have an impeccable rep so I was worried I had messed up when I got seemingly high readings. Next time I'll pay more attention and RTFM.
Take care

[Joes210gal]

Dang, talk about being on top of things. Jesse was waiting for you Mike.

I still haven't upgraded my test kits to Elos. I went to Exotic Aquarium and they don't stock Elos test kits. How can a store that big not have Elos kits?

[einsteins]

OMG....I just wasted an entire Kit trying to figure out why my kit was measuring so high.

The instructions in my kit said specifically that 1 drop = 1dkh.

now I find this info when the bottle might have one or two tests left...
I was testing salt mix water nano water and main reef water trying figure out why my alk readings were through the roof!

There goes 18.00 and 2 weeks of waiting to get the kit down the drain.

That hurts!

Elos.....I guess if you change your formulation you should change both of the INSTRUCTIONS.... and not just the card.... I didnt even notice the card till after the fact.

einsteins

[elosusa]

Sorry this is a mistake. Apparently the instruction pamphlet is incorrect on some of the kits. I will be sure to inform our retailers about this and change the instruction booklets.