High alk

[Psychotic Madman]

Not really confident enough to use acid (probably burn my fingers off) but thanks for the advice.

 

[Psychotic Madman]

Ro is bought from lfs, just tested, 5.7 alk.

 

[Garf]

Ro is bought from lfs, just tested, 5.7 alk.

Lol. That's not RODI, if accurate
Therefore you are adding Alk every time you top off for evap (and who knows what else?)

 

[Psychotic Madman]

That makes sense, will be at lfs tomorrow so will question this.

 

[Solo McReefer]

I would love to be the fly on the wall tomorrow

Customer, "You sold me RODI water, but it's just conditioned tap water, sir"

"I never wanted to work in a pet shop. I wanted to be a lumberjack..."

 

[Psychotic Madman]

Ok, so out of curiosity i have just tested my ro water and my salt mix. Both are bought from my lfs, been using them for years, freshwater and marine. The manager, Sam, is an avid reefer who always has time to help out with any problems, however, this is baffling him too. So, here we go with the test results.
RO SALT
Nitrate 0 0
PH 7.4 7.7
phos 0 0
Alk 5.1 10
Mag 0 1260
Cal 0 470
Sal 0 1.025
And my refractometer was calibrated prior to this test. Dont know if this is relevant, but there is some algae on the inner walls of both my ro containers, but not on my salt containers. It is not very noticable till i look closely. Hope something here helps to solve this. I stated earlier that i had done 25ltr water changes over 5 days this week, my mistake, it was 50 ltrs.

 

[Solo McReefer]

My freshwater water tank is HDPE

It can form a thin slime layer inside, bacteria

I just cleaned out some aspergillus(black shower mold), fungus

My thinking is that it's just metabolizing dust. Most indoor dust is dead skin cells, so that tracks

They could be eating the tank plastic, I tell myself "nah"

It also tracks that you could have fresh water algae. It blows around in the air.

Don't use anything toxic to clean it. I use vinegar and sodium bicarbonate only

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

No organisms are eating HDPE.

 

[Psychotic Madman]

HDPE? Just googled it.

 

[Psychotic Madman]

Just done a 25ltr water change and alk is down to 14.1, not ideall, but going the right way. Fingers crossed i can get it down over the next month.

 

[Psychotic Madman]

Been told not to test ro water with a saltwater test kit, is this correct?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Been told not to test ro water with a saltwater test kit, is this correct?

For what?

An alk titration works perfectly well in fresh water. The Hanna may not.

 

[Psychotic Madman]

For alk, what you said is what i thought. Looks like its time to change my lfs.