Calcium level

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emorrison33

Aquarium Advice Activist
Joined
Apr 24, 2003
Messages
101
Location
Pitman, N.J.
My tank just finished cycling the other day..yhooWhoo!! But anyway, I have noticed a steady decline in my calcium levels. It's now day 17 in my 20 gallon...I used live sand to help cycling. I started using a damsel for cycling, but was told not to use fish, it was old school...so I took him back and bought a piece of shrimp. On 12/26 I started to test for calcium. It was 440 mg/L. Since then it has dropped and today was 260 mg/L. All I have is live rock......Why ??????
 
By the way, I even added Coral-Vite on the 1st (I know it's bad!!) and my calcium level is still dropping.
 
all kinds of calcerous algaes use calcium to form. corraline being the most desireable. That is probably sucking it down. Something else could be that you have a high KH and calcium is precipitating out of solution.
 
My dKh has been high...started out at 16.8 dKH on the 28th of Dec. and today it was 12.6. Is there anything I can do about this ?
 
coralvite does not affect the calcium levels...aragamilk, purple up,kalkwasser, stuff like that will raise calcium.
 
I totally respect your advice Hara...I just figured Coral-Vite had calcium in it, plus other beneficial elements. I now know I should test for everything that I put in the water. but why do you think my calcium levels have been geting lower over time ?
 
As an experiment, test the calcium,KH and Ph in the next water you mix up for your water change, just before you are ready to put it in. Incidently, are you using ro water ? and what salt mix are you using?

I have a feeling that after your cycle is complete and you do about a 50% water change, your levels will be pretty close to where they need to be. I honestly would not be too concerned just yet.
 
I will be doing a water change tomorrow and will test then. I use RO water, not RO/DI, and use Instant Ocean salt mix. I test for alkalinity, is this the same as dKH? Just a mathmatical formula to convert?
 
The conversion math should be listed on the literature. I actually would have guessed instant ocean, it is not known to have very high calcium "out of the box". It is certainly going to be high enough tho to support a tank with nothing in it that would be draining the calcium. Oceanic salt is much higher to begin with. Before suggesting you switch or start dosing kalk, lets see what happens after the water change.
 
Test the new changewater before you add it to the tank to see what your adding too. Post the test results of those tests too. Check SG, pH, Alk, Ca and Mg if you have that test too.
 
Here are my results of my water change water (did not add it yet):
Temp: 75
pH: 8.2
dKH: 15.4
Calcium: 340 mg/L

Sorry...no magnesium test kit.
 
While you're cycling you're going to see the numbers jump all over the place. Mine did the same thing while I was cycling. I was told not even to bother testing until the tank had matured some since there would be so much flux. I was convinced (in spite of the great advice) that my coraline was sucking it all in. In retrospect it was just flux!

Your Ca is "low" out of the box (for if you want corals in there) and your dKH is a little on the high side, but your pH is good. I'd be inclined not to worry about it for a while. If your cycle's done go ahead and add that fish you have in QT (or put one in QT :D ) Once your concerned with keeping corals, jumping your Ca up will have the effect of slightly lowering your dKH.
 
I just replacerd my filter and membrane in my RO unit. Although the new water I just mixed has only been airating for a couple of hours, here are the results of the new batch.

Temp: 74
pH: 7.9
dKH: 7
Calcium: 280 mg/L
 
adding more mix to bring the salt levels up with also add more calcium, but not enough to make that great a difference. As I mentioned to you before, I feel alot of the calcium level is due to the fact it is Instant Ocean.
 
Hara said:
adding more mix to bring the salt levels up with also add more calcium, but not enough to make that great a difference. As I mentioned to you before, I feel alot of the calcium level is due to the fact it is Instant Ocean.

and salt can vary from batch to batch from the various companies
 
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