Raising KH

[jeffaquarius]

Ooops I mean Arm & Hammer pure baking soda.

 

[daney90]

Tested my water this morning again and results are KH 7.7 and calc 425. I think no matter what I do my tank doesn't want to have a high KH.

Should I decrease the dose of my calcium to 15 ml every 12 hrs?

 

[jeffaquarius]

I would crank up mag first to 1400 and reduce Part 1 to 30 mL while Part 2 to 15 mL then make more adjustment from there. Keep reducing Part 1 until it drops a little bit and put it back to make it stable.

Edit: I wonder if you have enough water surface agitation. The pH and kH interact with each other.

 

[daney90]

I think my surface agitation is pretty good enough lol. I have a tunze pump 1073.040 as my return pump and wp40 facing up. I'll try to adjust my KH later when I get home.

 

[daney90]

Or should i do a big water change and see if that helps my KH problem?

 

[jeffaquarius]

That's one option but I believe if you are using a Reef Crystals it has high calcium but has low alkalinity. What you can do is raise it with baking soda and take readings before you replace water. A 50% pwc may do the trick.

 

[daney90]

My calc and KH is still not stable after 35% water change.

I was dosing 35ml of KH and 20 ml of calc every 12 hrs and my readings were ok until water change.
July 24 - KH 7.7, calc 430
July 27 - kh 7.7, calc 420
July 29 - weekly water change
July 30 - kh 7.7, calc 350
July 31 - kh 7.7, calc 400 (result 2 hrs after calc was doses.)

My calc is going up after water change lol. I'm probably dosing too much? Maybe I should wait tomorrow's readings before adjusting the dose.

 

[Ingy]

I'd lower the calcium dose. That should reduce calcium carbonate precipitate as well, raising Alk.


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[daney90]

Ok. Just finished the tset and I got the same results as yesterday. Hmmm I'm going to reduce my KH to 35ml and calcium to 15 ml and see if that will affect tomorrow's readings.

 

[Gregcoyote]

You can also use sodium carbonate (soda ash). It's cheap and it doesn't effect ph as strongly. In fact it is recommended to bake baking soda for an hour to drive off the extra C02 atoms and create soda ash from baking soda (sodium bicarbonate). But plain old baking soda works fine, it can just temporarily effect ph some.


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