Low Alk

So the past few months have been rough on my reef. With searching for a house, than buying a house and moving, the aquarium has not received the attention I usually give it. I knew my Alk and CA were running low before the move because I forgot to place the hoses that dripped them in back into place after a WC. Long story short I ended up frying a surge protecter and had a nice black mark on the wall where it blew out below the switch but luckily no house fire!

Well when moving I used 100% new water and my CA is actually fine now, around 480-500. My Alk is what is low though I tested for the first time the other nice and my alk was barely a 5!!! Hopefully short term this wont be harmful to the corals they all look ok and the xenia is still pulsing but time to take some corrective action!

 

In my experience, if you begin fixing a problem before the corals start to show signs of it, you will usually get out ahead of it. Did you install a GFCI outlet in the new place?

 

Have not gone that far yet. I replaced all the outlets and the living room and bedroom first with new 20amp 3prong outlets to make suretheyre all done and grounded properly. I have never done a GFCI, can I just switch out the regualr outlet with a GFCI outlet or is there an extra ground or something to connect?

The only signs I can see are the frogspawn and hammer do not seem to be expanding as full as they did before. They do still expand nicely though just not enough to fill up the entire spot they used too. I did just adjsut the vortechs again though so it might be jsut an adjustment to flow.

 

Also, part of my problem before was the tank was so close to the wall and the stand was the one that came with the tank. It had 2 small enclosed areas and the middle was all open shelving. Was a NIGHTMARE for equipment, supplies, and organization. I built the new stand so I will be able to have all my equipment and surge protectors in the stand under the tank with proper drip loops set up for the cords rather than having the surge protectors laying on the floor behind the tank and the cords running right to them with no drip loop. I also made sure I left a good bit of space between the reef and the wall to make accessing behind the tank a much easier task

 

Whats the mag. level?

 

Havnt checked on the new tank. Im using the same salt mix and my Mag was always between 1400-1600. I need to do a full run of test but I hate doing that damn Mag test with the Red Sea its such a pain in the arse lol.

 

The GFCI plug instals the same way as a regular plug. The only difference between the two is the GFCI has a circuit breaker inside of it. All of the connections will be the same.

 

I will definity upgrade my plugs on the outlet then!! Thank you will be much safer. Should you still use a surge protector with it? And if I were to have another mishap again would the surge fry or would the GFCO trip first?

 

I recently had a new Elos test kit that showed about 1.5 lower than the Hannah checker. Showed about 6 on Elos which was 7.5 on Hannah.

 

Im assuming you assuming you are talking alk. IF so there was a good read on advancedaquarist about the checkers. When comapred to lab test equipment the phosphate checkers were very accurate but with the alk checkers they were always off. If I rmemeebr correctly they amount they were off was pretty consistant so it was easy to test with the checker and in your head adjust for the difference to know where you were really running.

Basically I dont use the checker for alk because its too much of a hassle and not worth it IMO. I do use the checker for phoshates since there are no real good liquid reagent test though. Alk I use API for quick results and Red Sea for mroe accurate results. They are usually pretty close when I test both at the same time.