Parrothead's 55 gallon Reef

[Parrothead]

4.28 meq/L back on 8/28 about a week ago.

[charlie]

What in the heck is goin on?????????????????????????????????????

[Parrothead]

Don't know, thats why I said I'll check it a little later get race ready would ya, everybody looks healthy and no one is stressing, might not have mixed it right, operator error maybe????

[charlie]

Mix up a batch and check the alk and the ph Robert, this crap is getting old with the IO.

[Parrothead]

will do, as soon as I finish eating,

[Parrothead]

Just checked the tank again, ph 8.2, alk still won't measure, will mix a batch and see what I get.

[Parrothead]

1 gallon batch
Ph 8.2
alk 4.75 meq/L

Will check tank again in the morning.

I'm baffled

[charlie]

I'm Charlie,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,but I am also baffled???

[Parrothead]

Like I said, everybody in the tank is cool, will check it again in the morning.

[Parrothead]

Good Morning, this is Baffled

Alk @ 5.03 meq/L
pH @ 8.0

Will check pH again a little later in the day and see what it reads

Tanks
Robert

P.S did you make the end of the race

[charlie]

Yeah, I even made it thru Nascar now.

I don't know what to say here. How often do you do your water changes again?

[Parrothead]

every other week, test parameters weekly

[charlie]

And you top off with RO/DI right? Somewhere, somehow, we are missing something Robert.
No buffer, right?

[Parrothead]

Nope, you warned me about the evils of such things, now I have discovered something and this proably has an affect on the pH, anyway, nitrates are slightly elevated, for my tank anyway, but my wife's gotta have it condy anemone has gone mia, I think it assumed room temp. have not seen hide nor tentacle of it in about a week, so if it went south, that would whack certain area's of water quaility, but would it affect the alk? And yes RO/DI water is used for top off, from the machine that is up at the grocery store, it has a digital read out as to when last serviced and I fill up my containers with in a day or two of service.

Tanks,
Robert

[Parrothead]

mid-day pH check

Dropping, est. @ 7.9

Monitor will be a very near future purchase, just to be on the safe side, you had said pinpoint correct?

[charlie]

I have no freaking idea why your alk is like it is Robert. A missing condy isn't the answer. I don't know about the Ph thing either, that is the darn problem with test kits for Ph, I think they are to subjective. Pinpoint!!!!

[Doodaa]

Could be another cycle...especially if something died...or the alkalinity numbers are incorrect.

[Parrothead]

If by subjective you are referring to user opinion(or Wishing) vs. actual reading, I grabbed the village idiot here(my wife's boss) to him ph is part of the greek alphabet and I'd be surprised if he knows the english alphabet, told him to pick the color that best matched the test tube, he picked between the 8.0 and 7.8.

What about natural buffering ability?

I've Got 70 lbs of rock, 40 is the gulf aquacultred, and the 30 give or take a lb or two is fuji, using 40 lbs of live gulf sand, lots of shells and shell particles mixed in the sand, and from the old bio cube, 20 lbs of store bought wannabe live sand.

Is it possible that I've lost the natural ability to buffer the system?

Like you said we are missing something, somewhere.

[charlie]

The tests themselves are subjective, meaning you could probably do 3 tests in a row, and come up with something different.

I am lost as far as alk goes. You wouldn't think that the rock would do that. but anything is possible?????

[Parrothead]

Doodaa,

Alk checked using a brand new, just delivered, well 4 weeks ago, salifert test kit, You helped here before on the pH issue, I've got 900 gph of flow at the surface via the skimmer(280 gph), and 2 H.O.T powerfilters that are used strictly for flow and carbon on occasion, no other media present in them, dead center of the 55 3 inches down is a 300 gph powerhead, with the flappy dude pointing down at the center of the tank to circulate the lower levels, and a K2 at 600 gph blowing straight across the tank at a depth of about 3 inches. Flow should be covered, not what you got by any means but still should be ok.

Tanks
Robert