STN from alk increase?

[EnderG60]

Ok so I bumped my alk up from 2mg/L to 3.5 in one shot(dumb move on my part i know) and now im getting some tissue loss on my monti caps a millie and some others.

Is that just alk burn and if so do I need to worry about more tissue loss or is it something else im not thinking of?

[twon8]

how did you bump it up? what did you use? it is possible that it is the alk spike, but it could be other things.

[EnderG60]

reef buffer mixed with tank water and dumped in the fuge.

I did also just put on a new bulb(old 20k xm to a 14k blue line 400w) but its been on for over a week now....

[EnderG60]

all my orange monti is gone, half my green one, my bottle bush is 95% gone, one of my millies is loosing tissue in the middle.....

how do i stop this?

[Lagger]

Sounds like drastic changes causing RTN. Big jump in par, increased alk.

Did you acclimate the new lighting & whats your current alk reading?

[EnderG60]

Didnt bother to aclimate due to the slight increase in par. PPFD went from 128 to 142. shouldnt be that big an increase to need aclimation

and current alk reading is 3 mg/L, which is where it usually is but my top off rate decresed a bit so it dropped to 2 when i bumped it up.

but that was about 4 days ago now, why is everything going bad now?

[twon8]

i would do a water change, run some carbon and make sure your skimmer is running, maybe add some flow if you can

[hatfielj]

I recently had this happen to me also. I had my Ca reactor set too fast and I added some mag sulfate too which I believe spiked my alk pretty high and I lost about 3-4 nice colonies of sps. I learned my lesson from that.

[Lagger]

Originally posted by EnderG60
Didnt bother to aclimate due to the slight increase in par. PPFD went from 128 to 142. shouldnt be that big an increase to need aclimation

and current alk reading is 3 mg/L, which is where it usually is but my top off rate decresed a bit so it dropped to 2 when i bumped it up.

but that was about 4 days ago now, why is everything going bad now?

That's odd. Like you said, I dont think any of those changes are really drastic enough to start RTN. I would try to keep things stable as possible over the next few days in hopes it slows/stops. GL

[Justin74]

Usually not the alkalinity but the pH associated with adding the alkalinity. If you bump up the alk the pH inadvertantly usually goes up, if your sittin at 8.4 already, this could lead to some burning.

During any of this time did you test the pH? Always a good idea to keep an eye on it and will help you decide if you can just pour the alk, or if it needs to be dripped to avoid pH spikes.

-Justin

[rodjer_ramjet]

Can the same happen when adding new sand to a established tank?

[raddogz]

Originally posted by EnderG60
Didnt bother to aclimate due to the slight increase in par. PPFD went from 128 to 142. shouldnt be that big an increase to need aclimation

and current alk reading is 3 mg/L, which is where it usually is but my top off rate decresed a bit so it dropped to 2 when i bumped it up.

but that was about 4 days ago now, why is everything going bad now?

Actually if the XM bulb was old there's no way it would be 128 unless you did a test with a par meter. I had a red/green millie start showing signs of bleaching when I went from eight month old 250w Reeflux 12k to 400w Ushio 14k - I have since moved it to the bottom.

[Justin74]

Originally posted by rodjer_ramjet
Can the same happen when adding new sand to a established tank?

Among other things, possibly. IME when I placed my established reef in a new tank, same size but new sandbed. I spiked my pH out of being in an old dosing routine that I got into with my old system, which later realized my buffing copacity was nill on my old sand which clearly was not the case with the new sand. The new sand had a strong buffering copacity and didnt need much dosing before it would effect the pH, and that's exactly what it did. I got pH spike like nobody's business and burnt the tips on about 3/4 of my acros, so ya, inadvertantly it could happen.

-Justin