Water Chemistry

This has been a crazy week with my water parameters taking a hit due to the tank breakdown. The Alkalinity spiked up to 15 dKH, but I turned off the calcium reactor 5 days ago. Water temperatures have risen higher than I prefer, but I've got that normalized as well. The LR (live rock) in the barrel has been circulating and skimmed, and I've been checking it for Ammonia and Nitrite, but it never cycled. The sponges never started dying off, fortunately. I've started moving some of the rock into ...

The title is just a tad misleading, but I thought I'd show you what it looks like to me.

Using a Salifert PO4 test kit, I measure the water from my reef tank for Phosphate. The ideal reading is 0 to .03ppm (yes, it should be super low). Over the years, I've seen numbers as high as 3ppm in my tank to as low as 0. For the past 23 months, I've been dosing vodka daily to maintain lower nitrates, and it helps keep phosphate from rising but doesn't omit them like it does for others. ...

Since the spawning event last weekend, my tank has been in recovery mode. The pink hammer coral is in the worst shape and I'm not sure about its survival. I've had it since it was a three headed frag more than 7 years ago. Here's what it's been looking like lately.





The Rose BTA has turned Rose. It was much deeper red until ...

Time for the monthly image of my reef. I did some tests recently.

Salinity - 1.026
Nitrate - 3ppm
Phosphate - .5ppm (dosed Phosphate Control to bring it back down again)
Alkalinity - 10ppm
Temperature - 80.1F
pH - 8.33
ORP - 323



The skimmer really didn't seem to be packed with air bubbles, and the venturi tubes were obstructed in the pumps' inlets. I took off the ...

As the need arises, I perform water tests for various parameters, but usually I do the full battery of tests monthly at the minimum. Much to my shock, I discovered that I've not done so since Dec 31, 2009! So here are my results from today.



The one number that is the biggest concern is Phosphate, which is way out of whack. It isn't surprising because my skimmer hasn't been operating correctly for some time now, ...