View Full Version : Alk Powder in Display Tank
jverna1
03/26/2013, 04:36 PM
This morning a fellow reefer had a tank emergency. After going to work his wife called him telling him his tank was white with powder. Me being laid off he gave me a call so I could do him a favor and check out his tank for him. I went over to discover his two part alk had slowly dripped all night and created a powder film through out his whole tank. I siphoned out as much powder that I could and did a 10 gallon water change (Its a 65 gallon reef) to bring down his alk since it shot up to around 13. My question is how do you think he should go about removing all this powder? Turkey baste the rocks and refugium and let the filter sock take care of it or drain the tank and remove rocks and clean in fresh salt water? I just wanted to run it by reef central and see what you guys thought. Thanks, Jay
MARINECRITTERS
03/26/2013, 05:31 PM
A ten gallon water change probably is not enough, I would at least go half for a situation like this, since this is alk powder it will not be caught by the filter sock, it will just dissolve/melt it's way through. All you can do is siphon it out, maybe even remove the rocks and clean them in a bucket of tank water, this might be hard if corals are glured to them.
So my choice would be to drain as much tank water out and clean the rocks, unless you have a heavily stocked tank.
jverna1
03/26/2013, 05:56 PM
A ten gallon water change probably is not enough, I would at least go half for a situation like this, since this is alk powder it will not be caught by the filter sock, it will just dissolve/melt it's way through. All you can do is siphon it out, maybe even remove the rocks and clean them in a bucket of tank water, this might be hard if corals are glured to them.
So my choice would be to drain as much tank water out and clean the rocks, unless you have a heavily stocked tank.
I just talked to him and thats what he plans to do. His tank is not well established and he doesnt have any encrusted corals to his rock so he is gonna remove the corals and dip his rock in fresh salt water and do a large water change. He is in for a long night. Thanks for your response marine critters.
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