Alk & Amm increasing; pH decreasing??!!??

CWH · Jul 3, 2023

Howdy fellow reefers! I need some assistance:

I have a 89g Redsea Reefer (Total Column is 112g) that is about 8m old. At month ~4 (Feb/March '23), the Alk suddenly spiked at >20 overnight. I was dosing insane amounts of Alk to keep up with all the frags I had in there, then out of nowhere it stopped. Had a bunch of coral die along with most of my snails. Stabilized the tank and got the Alk to about 11 or so, coral doing well again, snails doing well again. I haven't dosed any Alk in 3-4m (NOT A DROP), yet for some reason the Alk is increasing again. I've been doing 12-15g water changes a few times a week and it just keeps going up. My thought was that all the Alk i was dosing is leaching out of the live rock? ‍

Another oddity is that the pH has been getting low again - at night it's gotten down to 7.88 on occasion and the Amm creeped up to 0.27. I added from Seachem Prime i thereand started dosing Microbacter7 for 2 weeks straight thinking that maybe my biofilter was messed up. I've been adding Seachem Balance in there to get the pH up - from some threads i read that could potentially cause a delayed increase in the Alk so is that it??? The only change was that I added a UV light on the return and someone suggested that I have it on too much so it may be messing with my biofilter?

Current parameters as off yesterday:
pH: 7.93-8.1 (8.1 was due to my adding Balance - it wasn't going above 7.96)
Alk: 14.12 before water change, 13.24 a few hours after
Ca: 457
Mg: 1282
Amm: 0.01
Nitrate: 2.0 (been adding Neonitro)
Phos: 0.07

Live rock, Live sand, Fuge with Sea Lettuce, Skimmer, UV light on return, Ozone at night

In summary: pH decreasing, Alk and Amm increasing. Any suggestions on what is going on?

blaxsun · Jul 3, 2023

Stop dosing alkalinity and continue weekly 10% water changes until you get it under 11dKH again. I wouldn't worry about the pH until you get your alkalinity back in-check.

pH drops at night are normal. If you're concerned about ammonia, get a SeaChem ammonia alert badge for your tank. They're fantastic and cheaper than testing for ammonia.

BigMonkeyBrain · Jul 22, 2023

CWH said:
Howdy fellow reefers! I need some assistance:

I have a 89g Redsea Reefer (Total Column is 112g) that is about 8m old. At month ~4 (Feb/March '23), the Alk suddenly spiked at >20 overnight. I was dosing insane amounts of Alk to keep up with all the frags I had in there, then out of nowhere it stopped. Had a bunch of coral die along with most of my snails. Stabilized the tank and got the Alk to about 11 or so, coral doing well again, snails doing well again. I haven't dosed any Alk in 3-4m (NOT A DROP), yet for some reason the Alk is increasing again. I've been doing 12-15g water changes a few times a week and it just keeps going up. My thought was that all the Alk i was dosing is leaching out of the live rock? ‍

Another oddity is that the pH has been getting low again - at night it's gotten down to 7.88 on occasion and the Amm creeped up to 0.27. I added from Seachem Prime i thereand started dosing Microbacter7 for 2 weeks straight thinking that maybe my biofilter was messed up. I've been adding Seachem Balance in there to get the pH up - from some threads i read that could potentially cause a delayed increase in the Alk so is that it??? The only change was that I added a UV light on the return and someone suggested that I have it on too much so it may be messing with my biofilter?

Current parameters as off yesterday:
pH: 7.93-8.1 (8.1 was due to my adding Balance - it wasn't going above 7.96)
Alk: 14.12 before water change, 13.24 a few hours after
Ca: 457
Mg: 1282
Amm: 0.01
Nitrate: 2.0 (been adding Neonitro)
Phos: 0.07

Live rock, Live sand, Fuge with Sea Lettuce, Skimmer, UV light on return, Ozone at night

In summary: pH decreasing, Alk and Amm increasing. Any suggestions on what is going on?

I am not a chemist. I fail to understand how any hydroxide blend like in Seachem Balance can raise the PH without affecting the alkalinity.

Probably happens !