Quote:
Originally Posted by 92reefer
UPDATE:
Still dosing Vibrant once a week and seems to be holding off the few small patches of grey ugly stuff. I'm getting a bit of green algae growing on the back overflow and a few spots on the rock work. Other than that tank looks really clean.
So onto a potential problem: I lost my cleaner shrimp (about 1.5yr old) about 3 weeks ago. He ate the night before and then 1 morning, dead.
So I replaced him with a new albeit smaller shrimp. Drip acclimated him about 25 mins, ate for 3 days and day 4 dead. WTH I'm thinking as cleaners are usually pretty hardy.
So did a few tests on tank water.
Using salifert for both tests, Ph (which sucks!) tested about 7.9 as best as I can tell since the color hues in the test vial just don't match to the color card bit I think 7.9 is fairly accurate.
So onto the the ALK, which was done twice and measured 3.2 dkH! WTH?? Isn't that extremely low? I'm wondering if this is why I lost 2 cleaners in a short period. This was measured at 11:30am with lights off: running 1 Radion Pro (natural mode at 40% intensity) and photo period on at 3pm, off at 11pm (7 hour daylight photo period to limit algae growth).
Tank is using an auto-top off feeding water from BRS 4 stage Dual-DI RO unit reading 0 TDS on the meter. Tank temp 78 degrees.
Advice, opinions, suggestions on my ALK reading?
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Hello,
Sad to hear about the shrimps... anyway, low alkalinity shouldn't be a problem in itself but it makes the water more prone to quick changes in PH which in turn could stress the animals. And since shrimps are a bit less hardy than fish, it could potentially be the source of your problems. Alkalinity also effects how well corals can make use of calcium and magnesium. I would suggest slowly, and i can't stress this enough, sloooooooowly raising your alkalinity to between 8 and 9. As long as it's in within that range and stable, you will have less potential PH swings.
Mix some salt in RO/DI water and see what alkalinity you get. If needed, buffer that fresh mix with PH/KH buffer and do a water change... Wait a day and measure your display tank. The next day you repeat the water change with ph/kh buffer. Keep doing this until you get in the 8-9 range in the display tank.
Next step is to figure out how much alkalinity your tank consumes on a daily/weekly basis and figure out a way to compensate for this loss (balling light, kalkwasser etc).
Good luck!
//N