Calcium Help!

B

bg3489

Reefing newb
About a week ago I noticed that my alk dkh reading was low ( around 7 dkh). I used kent super buffer to raise my alkalinty and was then at a PH of 8.4 and alk of 12 dkh. My calcium had been low at this point, around 300 ppm. I picked up a bottle of kent marine tech cb part B, the calcium buffer. I added this to the tank for several doses as directed however to find no results. Test after test showed no real increase in my Calcium. I today bought turbo calcium and added 1/2 teaspoon to the 115 gallon tank. I retested this evening and found my calcium to still be at 300ppm! What is going on? I'm afraid to touch anything else for fear of worsing my situation. I know my alk is probably too high but should i just keep adding the tubo calcium slowly to correct this problem? Any help would be greatly appreciated!
 
Last week I changed 10 gallons on monday 1/22 and then another 15 gallons on 1/23 in order to help cycle my new hospital tank.
 
In my house since early august however all the sand, rock, and water was completly from another tank which has been established for several years.
 
It could be your natural buffers need recharging, thats why I asked the last time you done a substancial water change I use to do a 50% water change every 6 months for that reason. Hope this helps.
 
Alright that sounds logical.. I heard that from a bunch of people but now I'm still thinkin that my calcium and alk are just out of balance. I'm going to test my magnesium as well to see if this is the problem. Thanks for the help!
 
Alright so I retested and my calcium went up from 260 to 320 since around 2 days ago! The problem however is my DKH went back down from 12 to 10. Is this normal? And if I continue over the next week or so to raise my calcium to around 400 will my dkh continue to drop?
 
That depends on how you are dosing and what you are dosing with. Also before you keep dosing check you mg first because if this is off then you will never get your alk and calc where you want them. You want your mg at atleast 1200. I hope this helps.
 
I'm dosing with turbo calcium and for the dkh I'm using Kent superbuffer. I'm going to run out and test the mg at my lfs tomorrow since I don't have a kit for this. Thanks !
 
So I re-tested today and everything is back to normal. I'm at 400 ppm of calcium and my alkalinity is between 10 and 11 Dkh. I'm going to track these numbers for the next few days in order to see how much of each my tank uses per day so I can know how much to dose. Thanks everyone!
 
They did not have a mg tester so I don't know! I'm assuming its fine however casue the reason my levels were off was b/c I added too much dkh buffer without any calcium.
 
I have been testing both my calcium and alkalnity each day for about a week now. My results and subsequent dosings are as follows: 1/29 (Ca 320 ppm , Dkh 10-11, Dosed 1 tsp turbo calcium), 1/30 (Ca 400 ppm, Dkh 10-11), 2/1 (Ca 340 ppm, Dkh 9-10), 2/2 (Ca 280 ppm, 8 dkh, Dosed 1 tsp turbo calcium and 1 tsp kent superbuffer), 2/3 (Ca 300 ppm, 8 dkh) 2/4 (Ca 380 ppm, Dkh 8-9, Dosed 1/2 tsp turbo calcium and 1/4 tsp superbuffer), 2/5 (Ca 320 ppm, Dkh 9-10, Dosed 1/2 tsp turbo calcium) 2/6 (Ca 320 ppm, Dkh slightly over 10)... These results don't make much sense to me at least! Any suggestions on what my problem could be?
 
hey found your problem instant ocean has issues with calcium stability your not the only one that has had this problem try oceanic.
 

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