High Calcium

[pmb_67]

Hi all,

Something's bugging me with my reef tank - high calcium. It's regularly reading around 600 mg/l according to Salifert test kit - including a brand new test kit in case the problem was the test kit's age (shouldn't be, the old one's expiry date was early 2013). Any thoughts as to why this might be? I thought when it first went up that it was due to the rear tank wall scraping I did over a couple of weeks - had got behind on the coralline algae removal. That's long since done (and it doesn't seem to be growing back) and yet the problem persists. Water changes (approx 20%, weekly) are done with Tropic Marin Pro Reef salt, which makes up to the 350-380 mg/l ballpark, so it should be dropping over time. I don't dose any Calcium supplements at the mo and haven't for a while (like, since this started back in August). Other water stats are normal and steady - salinity 35ppt (= SG 1.025); pH 8.3; KH 7.0 (in dKH, or 2.51 meq/l); Magnesium 1305 mg/l; Nitrate just detectable by Salifert kit, so about 0.1mg/l; Phosphate 0; Iodide and Iodate are both a bit low, just registering on Salifert kit.

I'm not toooo worried by this as all livestock seems to be pretty happy and healthy - but thinking about it now am worried as to whether maybe I should be?!

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Paul

 

[MBOU]

Do you have many corals in the tank? Because using reef salt without many hard corals to actually use up half the minerals just means its going to end up building up levels a bit.

I see it quite regularly with Tropic Marin Pro Reef and Red Sea Max Reef Salt, people with tanks will few or only softie corals (in my experience) had more problems than those with lots of/hard corals.

Maybe use the non reef version if it is that?

If not, what other supplements are you adding to the tank? List all of them

I had an 'oops' when i couldnt work out why corals didnt do great in my tank and when testing calcium i gave up at 1500mg/l as it wasnt even beginning to change colour! Turned out one of the supplements i was adding (id been told didnt have calcium in it) actually did have high levels in there and i missed it in the small print ingredients.

 

[pmb_67]

Hi MBOU,

I've got a few hard corals in there, but not enough to place big Calcium demands maybe. I have 2 brains (brain corals, that is) and a couple of LPS frags - one favia(?), one acan. Also have two SPS corals from Conservation Corals (or is it Corals for Conservation), plus a few frags. Still softie dominated, but no longer sporting the monster leather I used to have - just took up too much room in the tank and I was concerned it might be chemically inhibiting the hardies.

As for supplements, all that goes in to the tank is:
(1) the aforementioned TM Pro Reef salt at water change time (like, made up to the right salinity and temp!)
(2) RO via osmolator top-up
(3) Magnesium chloride and the Fauna Marin Fluoro/Iodine complex as per Balling Lite
(4) Sodium bicarbonate as per Balling Lite
(5) Salifert Iodine dosing (trying to correct the zero iodine I created by running lots of carbon permanently - have migrated to a small bag one week per month)

Will go check the Balling F/I additive and the Salifert Iodine, but I doubt either has much Calcium in...

Paul

PS Already wondered about the salt, bought some Kent Marine to try out instead - thing is, my new salt water made up for water changes doesn't measure that high in Calcium; in theory my water changes should be bringing the Ca level down in the same way that regular water changes help keep nitrate down (where the level isn't staying down itself due to lovely denitrifying bacteria!).