anit77;1111863 wrote: Hey Jeff, I just went through something similar. I think it's just part of the learning curve, just that everyone's system is going to do things a little different. It can be quite frustrating to figure out but once you do you'll be on the right track. Just remember if you're putting it in and your numbers keep dropping it's going somewhere, most likely to precipitate. It can't drop that much any other way, once pecip starts it's like a runaway train and the more dosing you do the more fuel it has to keep precping out. I did look at your thread and pics on R2R. While there may be a little coraline on the rocks it's not enough to pull that much alk by itself. You've said there's no precipitate that you can find anywhere else in the tank like heaters, glass, pumps or the sand. I'd say it's mostly on the rock and probably on the sand under areas of the rock. I believe the rock has precip and a light film of algae on it and little if any coraline. you would have to have put something in the tank that had coraline on it for it to begin to spread in the system.
Throughout all of this you haven't posted what you have been dosing and exactly how much. I figure after your rock sand and equipment you have about 95 to 110 gallons of total system volume, let's call it 105. This is what I'd do in your shoes, step back and take a deep breath. Now stop all dosing of everything, nada, nothing for a couple days, no products of any kind. Then after a couple days do a big water change. 50-75% and let it sit without doing any dosing for another few days. The only things running should be your main pump, powerheads, ATO. heater(s) and skimmer. I would also use a cheaper salt right now, plain ole Instant Ocean. There's no sense spending more money on the salt when you've got nothing growing yet, just make sure the system is at 35ppt. Once you've done the water change take readings of Alk, Cal & Mag and post them here along with the PH & salinity (Taken with a calibrated Refractometer). Then test the alk at the same time each day for the following few days posting those numbers too, along with PH. Also tell us what your light schedule and intensity is.
Feed your live stock at the normal times you do now but a little more sparingly at each feeding. When you're done with this the water should be back in ionic balance and the precip will have stopped. We can then start helping you build your numbers back up the right way.
