Dosing Kalk- Calcium Goin Up-Alk Goin Down

I have been using BRS kalk on my 82 gallon system for 2 weeks now. My levels are not bad, just not stable enough yet. Over the past 2 weeks my calcium has gone from 475 to 490-495. So its a very slow change. However a little high. Also my DHK has gone from 10.1 to 8.1 over the same time frame. Again slow but not exactly stable. Is my ALK going down because of the elevated calcium level? Should i just dose less? I am currently dosing 1 teaspon per gallon of top-off water. PH stays stable at 8.0 with dosing. Thanks for any help!

 

Yes, that is exactly what is happening. Your elevated Cal levels are causing your Alk to fall.

Are you only dosing kalk, or are you also dosing 2 part?

 

just kalk for now. at the moment i am very low demand. 82 gal, 1 frogspawn, coralline algae, soft coral. starting sps in a couple months. So when i lessen the dose, calcium will level off and will ALK keep dropping or will it too level off too? thanks for the hasty response!

 

Are you doing water changes? With what you currently have for livestock, that alone would keep parameters stable. Once you add more stony corals, you'll need to test and dose cal, mag, and alk.

 

I would probably tend to agree with Dowtish, however, we need to know you magnesium levels. Based on your second post, I probably also agree with Mr. Bill and you probably do not need to be dosing kalk anyways. In the world of reef chemistry, adding something doesn't always make it go up. If you add it and you don't need to, it can make it, or other things go down. Ca and alk are good examples, but the relationship is stabilized by mg. I.e. higher levels of mg can allow more ca and alk before they start pushing each other out of solution.

 

I do water changes once every month or so, and my mag level is at 1420ppm, so pretty decent. Thanks for the input everyone