I hate to admit ignorance, but...

[Cakepro]

I am such a bad reefergirl. I have been looking at my corals and, seeing no problems, have not kept up on testing the water nor on my water changes. Here's my system info: 75 gallon tank with a 10 gallon sump (which houses nothing but some blue filter medium for filtration), a big PM skimmer, and several powerheads for water movement. There's about 150 pounds of LR and a 3" deep sandbed, originally started with Southdown sand and 10 pounds of live sand. Chordates include 2 true percs, 2 green chromis, one purple tang, and one copperband butterfly. Lighting is CSL 4 x 96 watt PC. Corals include acropora, montipora, hydnophora, (yikes...here's where my spelling gets bad) welsophyllia, capricornis, tubeastrea, tubipora, goniapora (no flaming), caulastrea, and various finger leathers, sarchophytons, Fiji yellow leather, clove, daisy, button and star polyps galore, mushrooms, gorgonians...it's a nicely stocked and varied reef tank. Add to that the usual clean-up crew, a fat and happy bubbletip anemone, a sand bed full of tiny brittle stars and spaghetti worms, two abalone, two limpets, etc., etc., etc. Everything is doing very well. My sps corals are growing wonderfully (except the blue ones, which appear to be slow-growers, but even they have new baby branches growing where they've encrusted the rock onto which they were mounted). Now on to my water test results (I hope you're not asleep yet): pH 7.7 (this is chronic), spg 1.023, temp 77* F, ca 315 (EGADS), ammonia 0, nitrite .20, nitrate 2.5 ppm, alk 2.40 and dKh 6.7 (all values attained using Salifert test kits). I use Red Sea sea salt, plain, neutral (not limewater) top-off water, and all water goes through a KM Hi-S unit. Oh yes, the phospate was .50. I kid you not, everything is nice and fluffy, open and growing. Later today I am going to do a 15 to 20 gallon water change and I have already placed PhosGuard beads in the sump. I have no macroalgae. There's about a gallon of evaporation a day (there are fans blowing across the surface of the water, as I have the light hood placed atop the open-top tank). Not to beat a dead horse, but my pH has never been over 8.0, and that was when I was dosing kalkwasser. Dripping Kalk was a PITA so I switched to adding KM's SuperBuffer DKH and turbo calcium. Granted, I haven't added calcium in a week, and when I was doing fairly regular testing, the ca would be between 400 and 430, so obviously the corals have been using more calcium than I have been replacing. Now, here are my questions:

If I do a 15 to 20 gallon water change tomorrow, when should I do my next one? A week, two weeks, or wait a whole month? I don't anticipate the first water change to be really efficacious, but don't want to do too many or too frequent or too large of water changes and upset everything in the tank.

Can I add kalkwasser to my 55 gallon open-top drum of top-off water just to keep the pH up and add Turbo Calcium daily as well as the KM SuperBuffer to get those two levels where they should be? I really don't want to start mixing and dripping kalk every day. I think I remember reading somewhere that if I keep a garbage bag on top of the water so the water is not exposed to air, the calcium will stay high in the kalk water, but if it is exposed to air, the calcium will fall out (forgive my not knowing the proper terminology here) but the pH will stay up...is this true?

I think my next tank modification will be to remove the sump (it's a wet/dry filter with nothing in it) and replace it with a refugium stuffed with macroalgae on a reverse photoperiod. Do you have any other suggestions for me to get my tank back in shape (besides not being lazy and reading all the chemistry threads on this site)?

Thank you,
~ Sherri ~

Oops...I forgot to add that the tank has been a reef tank for one year, and was a fish-only tank a year before that.

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Sherri:

If I do a 15 to 20 gallon water change tomorrow, when should I do my next one?

That depends on what you want it to accomplish, but IMO there is no need to wait longer than a week.

Can I add kalkwasser to my 55 gallon open-top drum of top-off water just to keep the pH up and add Turbo Calcium daily as well as the KM SuperBuffer to get those two levels where they should be?

Limewater can be combined with any type of calcium and alkalinity addition, and is especially useful to raise low pH.

How is the open drum of water put into the tank? I assume the drum is plastic? You'll of course want to add it slowly, but if your pH is 7.7, you won't need to be as slow as most people.

You will want to cover it somehow. Both the calcium and the hydroxide are eliminated from solution as CaCO3 forms, and it is the OH- that raises the pH and provides alkalinity.

I think my next tank modification will be to remove the sump (it's a wet/dry filter with nothing in it) and replace it with a refugium stuffed with macroalgae on a reverse photoperiod.

Thqt sounds like a good idea to me. It will raise the minimum pH (and maybe the max as well; this part is less clear to me), and will reduce the phosphate.

Here's another suggestion. I don't know the pH of KM's SuperBuffer DKH, but there are lots of different buffers around. Choose one with the highest pH. Maybe just use washing soda, or washing soda and some baking soda. Buffers can be formulated from those that lower pH (pure bicarboante) to those that raise pH a lot (pure carbonate). You'd want one that raises pH.

The original B-ionic would also be a good choice for your calcium and alkalinity needs, and would raise the pH.

[Cakepro]

Thank you very much for your input.

Yes, the drum is a poly drum and is stored in the back of the house...I manually tote the water to where the tank is in the front of the house (there was no other place to store two 55 gallon poly drums, one with seawater and one with RO water, in the house or garage, so I had my husband convert one of the bathrooms into a "water closet" LOL). I am about to attempt refilling the reef after the water change using 50 feet of clear Python tubing and a Maxi-Jet 1200. If that works, I'll try it with the daily top-off water as well. (End of superfluous information.)

I ordered some C-Balance from Pet Warehouse awhile back, and they screwed up and sent me three boxes of the stuff. Is that a comparable product to B-Ionic? I've noticed that many, many people use the B-Ionic and I don't hear much about C-Balance. I'll be happy to buy some B-Ionic if it's preferable to use.

Thanks again,
~ Sherri ~

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Is that a comparable product to B-Ionic?

I have no reason to doubt it's being comparable.

The alkalinity portion can be formulated to different pH values, so some of these two part additives may raise the pH more than others. In fact, ESV sells two versions of B-ionic that have different impacts on pH.

I am about to attempt refilling the reef after the water change using 50 feet of clear Python tubing and a Maxi-Jet 1200. If that works, I'll try it with the daily top-off water as well.

I hope that works. Lugging water around is one of the big pains of reef tanks.