melev

Strange mystery with my reef for the past 48-72 hours. It started about three days ago when I observed all the anemones in the Anemone cube shriveling up as if they were spawning. The tank didn't look cloudy though.


What I'd done prior to this event was replace the CO2 tank to my calcium reactor which had evaporated in less than two weeks due to some leak, more than likely. Since a lack of CO2 existed for at least a day, the pH in the calcium reactor rose from the normal 6.2 to 7.8. When I hooked up the CO2 tank this time, I used soapy water over the connection between the regulator and the cylinder to look for a leak. If it was leaking gas, the soapy water would cause it to form some big visible bubbles around the locking nut. There were none, so the tank appears to be installed correctly. Within a couple of hours, the pH level in the calcium reactor measured 6.2 again, which was good.

It was time to dose Prodibio, which I do every 15 days and have been doing so for 3.5 years. Due to the lack of alkalinity provided by the calcium reactor for a day, I decided to add two vials of Prodibio's Alki+ in an area of high flow of the 400g. These were the Pro sized vials, even though the instructions on the box said two vials weekly would treat 120 liters of water (which I doubt is correct). Pro vials are for 250g (1000 liters) per vial usually. So two would treat my 450g of water volume (400g, plus 60g cube, plus 10g frag tank, plus water in the sump & refugium - 450g is about right for liquid volume minus displacement. The Alki+ quickly flaked when it hit the water, so I didn't really expect it to do much since it didn't stay in liquid suspension.

The next day the anemones looked unhappy, very small balls and hardly open. The LPS corals in the reef looked fine, like the torch, hammers and frogspawn. Acans looked normal. Lobophyllia corals also looked normal. The readings on the Apex were very consistent. Take a look at these graphs that cover the past 7 days (the small graph at the bottom of each measurement) and the upper graphs represent that past 72 hours.

Yesterday I replaced the carbon in the Nextreef reactor to take out any toxins that might possibly be in the system. The skimmer is operating correctly, and skimmate seems typical.

The fuzzy gorgonian closed up for a full day. The unknown SPS looked less than stellar with some STN, and a few tips on the A. echinata turned white - oh no! Something is up, so tonight I did all my water tests. Here are the numbers:

10:30 p.m.
Temp: 79.4° F (Apex)
pH 8.25 (Apex)
ORP 315 (Apex)
Salinity 1.025 sg (calibrated digital refractometer)
Phosphate 0.2ppm (Salifert)
Nitrate 5ppm (API)
Calcium 440 ppm (Elos)
Magnesium 1350 ppm (Elos)
Alkalinity 6 dKH - OR? - 8 dKH depending how I read it.

Let me talk about the Elos kit for alkalinity. It's easy. 2.5ml of tank water in the vial, and every drop you add is 1 dKH. I've always added drops and counted when it changes from blue to orange, and that usually lands on 8. Something made me doubt this result tonight, so I pulled out the instructions once again and it said count the drops, stating when it changes from blue to yellow that's your number. Well, yellow is 6. Two more drops makes it orange and would be 8. So I re-tested a couple of times, and even tried the more precise method using 5ml of tank water with each drop's equivalent being .5 dKH instead. That yielded the 8.5 value if my orange method is right, but if I'm doing it wrong, the number was around 6. I'm not necessarily surprised it would be low when the calcium reactor was offline for a day or two due to the lack of CO2 gas. Going back to the reef, I stared at more corals. All the Chalices look fine. The Staghorn acro is fine, as it the limer and the birdsnests. All the montipora look fine. The Tubinaria is fine. The suncorals are opening for the night. The Nephthea seems fine. The conchs are fine, the starfish are normal, the peppermints are on patrol as usual. Some snails are off the glass, for whatever reason. The tongue coral looks normal. BUT, the Walking Dendro looks really retracted and somewhat pitted - maybe fish nipping... not sure.

My idea of buffering up the alkalinity with Alki+ seemed logical at the time, when you consider the situation. But did it piss off the anemones -- all 10 of them?! Why is that gorgonian shut tight still? The anemones looked a little better today, but they are nowhere near their normal voluminous size that literally fills the 60g cube with a sea of tentacles.

Using the Reef Chemistry Calculator, I decided to determine how much Fritz Bi-Carbonate I would need to mix up to raise the dKH by 2, and it suggested 21 teaspoons of the product. Mixing up 5 teaspoons in a large cup of RO water, I poured this into the overflow so it would drain into the skimmer section and mix into the entire system. I did this twice for a total of 10 heaping teaspoons. I glanced at the pH number on the Apex, which seemed to drop uncharacteristically. Bi-Carbonate shouldn't drop it, if anything it should rise. When I poured the solution into the water, it didn't get cloudy as I'd seen when using baked baking soda - and I've done that lots of times in my life. Super weird since that would normally make the pH spike for a few minutes (when using baked baking soda). I checked the tank's alkalinity 10 minutes later, and it seems to be closer to 8. I dosed another 5 teaspoons, putting that total spoons at 15 of the recommended 21 via the reef calculator. I waited 30 minutes, tested with the precise method: it took 17 drops, hence it is measuring 8.5 dKH now. So, is the Fritz bi-carbonate correctly labeled, or is that powder perhaps the carbonate version designed to not affect pH? Like I said, confusing. Baked baking soda also tends to have what looks like white rocks in the bottom of the cup that didn't fully dissolve, this stuff looked more like wet white sand residue.

Did the Alki+ somehow really affect the anemones adversely? I don't know - but it seems unlikely. If the alkalinity dropped to 6 dKH, that seems to correspond more likely to some unhappy livestock, but it isn't system-wide - just a few select critters. Maybe I caught it in time. I'm not sure yet.