Solid precipitate on my sump

[daney90]

I've been dosing for ~6 months now and I just recently cleaned my sump due to its white solid deposits on the glass that took me a day to scrubbed it off.

Right now I'm using kent salt and it gives me fairly high calcium reading and a low calcium. So I dose my tank with aquavitro (eight.four) a KH buffer to have 8.5dkh at 450 ppm calcium. I have my doser set 21 ml/day of the eight.four in my sump where I put my return pump.

How can I stop this solid precipitate? or should I be cleaning my sump every 3 months and scape this white thing?

 

[jeffaquarius]

What is your magnesium reading?

 

[daney90]

It was 1400

 

[jeffaquarius]

It was? Precipitation can be caused by low magnesium and dosing with calcium. Do you stagger dosing of alk and calcium?

 

[daney90]

I used to dose both when I was using reef crystal as my salt. Now that I switched to kent salt, it's calcium was really high so I stopped dosing my calcium supp and continue my alk.

 

[Mebbid]

Sounds like you have a little too much calcium causing it to precipitate out. At 8.5dKH you are at 3 meq/L of alkalinity

Check out this link.
Chemistry And The Aquarium: Solving Calcium And Alkalinity Problems — Advanced Aquarist | Aquarist Magazine and Blog

 

[daney90]

Is 8.5dkh too much? I remember when I stopped dosing my alkalinity would dip down to 5dkh.

 

[Mebbid]

Nope, not at all. Its just the calcium, magnesium, and alkalinity have to balance each other out to stop from precipitating.


How is the flow where youre dosing the alkalinity?

 

[daney90]

I have the lines placed on my 3rd compartment of my sump where the return pump is at.

 

[Mebbid]

I have the lines placed on my 3rd compartment of my sump where the return pump is at.

I would first try adding some more turbulence into that compartment. There's a decent gallonage flow in the last compartment normally; but it's rarely turbulent enough from what I've seen.

 

[daney90]

Ok I'll try it to put it in the first compartment where the drain, skimmer and gfo reactor and see if that works.


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