first major disaster

[dzhuo]

i turn off the ac500, tunze ph and a minijet for target feed. after the feeding, i turn everything backon. first, the tunze ph won't start up. that's 6 times in 3 weeks. i target feed twice each week and the tunze ph had never once start up correctly after being turn off. second, the minijet won't start up. that's a first for the minijet. i take the tunze ph complete apart and trying to "fix" it. never can. give up and replace it with another ph. third, check water parameters like i usually do. i checked pH, alk, sg and cal 3 times a week. pH and sg are always good but alk has dropped to 8dkh from 11dkh and cal has dropped to 340 from 420 after a single water change from last night. why? absolutely no clue except i use IO and it's known to be extremely low in both alk and cal. i can't believe how many people say they love IO in their reef tank. are those people crazy or what? IO is mean for fish only. never mean for reef tank. when i first got into the hobby and asking for opinion on salt, everyone was like go out and get yourslef a bucket of IO. i did. major mistake by listening to clueless reefers. never will i buy another bucket of IO for my reef. seriously.

ok so alk and cal is low. no big deal. i got additive like kent superbuffer and b-ionic. first, mix a cup of kent superbuffer and pour it into the tank as i have done many times before to raise alk. second, try raise my cal so i went to the chemistry calculator and see how much part B is need to raise cal from 340 to 430. it says 56ml. (btw, whowever that suggest b-ionic is a great product to raise alk/cal is again clueless as what the product is designed for.) so i started to add part B slowly. it took 5 minutes except i notice my crystal clear water has suddenly turned into slightly milky water. i was like "what's the f***?". turns out my mom has switched out the b-ionic buckets. what used to be in the spot of part B now sits part A. i ended up pouring 60ml of part A into my tank AFTER i added a cup of kent superbuffer. now i can't even see 2" into my tank. it's all milky!!! amazingly corals and fish seem to be ok. they don't seem to care at all. what? they don't care alk is probably @ 30dkh? what a day.

sorry about the long post. i am just angry at myself about my own mistake.

[Electrobes]

Hmm.. throwing an opinion out is one thing but insulting others based on their opinions and/or products they use is no good, and there will be a lack of people who will help you.
To try to help you out, there could be many reasons why you've had some probs with your tank, and I wouldn't solely point out to I.O. salt. to begin with. People enjoy this sat because it is very stable, you may have had bad luck with it, but the majority of reefers, including major contributors and leaders in this hobby, have great results from it.
I like to think of it as a salt that offers stability but very little of anything else... the rest is dosed by the reefer on his/her own to match what they would like. In your case it is very odd that the Alkalinity dropped, but not at all strange that our calcium dropped... what is strange about it is that it dropped so tremendously.
I believe it was a mistake to measure out a dosage that would raise calcium and alk almost by a 100ppm in one shot. This would essentially shock the system, even without your B-Ionic mistake. I would definately do a water change, possibly with another salt, not necessarily with another brand, and work from there. Good luck :)