Advanced Aquarist site down?

[Cearbhaill]

I have been trying to access some reading on Advanced Aquarist website and have ben getting errors since last night.

I am having pH/alkalinity issues.
Tank established 1-1-04 (easy to remember) cycle completed quickly and my readings have consistently been

SG 1.026
pH 8.1 AM to 8.4 PM
CA 430
Alk 9.6

I have not done anything to keep them at this level- my schedule of water changes and very low bioload just kept things stable. All water is RO/DI.

I have recently begun adding corals (as many as 15 or so, but very small frags) as well as a few small fish and yesterday I noticed my pH in the 8.7 range (Pinpoint monitor recently calibrated). No animals in the tank seem affected aside from some Tubastrea that were looking pretty plump.

Ran a quick check and sure enough though my not paying attention my alkalinity had dropped to 8.0- is this low enough to cause problems??
CA is 400.

Knowing I should not lower pH too quickly I added white vinegar over the course of yesterday and got it down to 8.5.
This AM I again added vinegar and lowered it from 8.5 to it's current 8.4 (still very early AM- actinics just came on).

I then added 10 ml Part #1 B-Ionic (120 gallon system) which did not affect things at all. I'm fixing to add another 10ml now.

Without access to the Advanced Aquarist articles I am unsure about how fast to raise alkalinity, or to be more specific- how much Part #1 is it safe to add at one time??
At this very moment alkalinity is still 8.0.

This is the very first chemistry challenge I have faced and I can't access the info.
I realize that my parameters may not be in the "dangerous" zone but want to get things stabalized as quickly as is safe. As luck would have it I have a shipment of corals coming today and most certainly do not want them subjected to these variances.
My q-tank is in hyposalinity mode so it no help as a holding tank.

I do not want to mess things up further, but am unsure whether it would be best to continue adding vinegar and part #1 or do a massive water change. RO/DI is running in preparation....

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Advanced Aquarist does appear to be down right now, but I do not know why. So is reefs.org that hosts it.

I'm sure that I can find my articles on web archiving sites if there is a particular one that you are interested in. Like this on on solving alkalinity problems:

http://web.archive.org/web/20021212220021/http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/nov2002/chem.htm

Ran a quick check and sure enough though my not paying attention my alkalinity had dropped to 8.0- is this low enough to cause problems??
CA is 400.

No, that should be fine. :)

i usually recommend alkalinity of 7-11 dKH. If you want to raise it above 8 dKH, you can do that as fast as you want, as long as the ph doesn't get too high. In your case, if the ph is really high, you might just use baking soda as it will not boost pH any:

from the article linked aove:

"

Baking Soda

To raise 50 gallons of tank water by 1 meq/L will require about 16 grams of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate; sodium hydrogencarbonate). Since a level teaspoon of baking soda weighs just under 6 grams, then 1 teaspoon will raise the alkalinity in that 50 gallons by ~0.4 meq/L (~1 dKH)."