Alkalinity consumption

[SuncrestReef]

My SPS corals have been going through a nice growth spurt over the past month.  My alkalinity consumption has been increasing, so I've been increasing the amount of BRS 2-part dosed each day spread out evenly over a 24 hour period.  I'm now dosing 100 ml per day on my Reefer XL 425 (approx 107 gallon total system volume).  According to the BRS dosing calculator, that equals about 1.3 dKH per day of consumption.

For you more experienced reefers out there, is this normal or does it seem unusually high?

Here you can see some of the new growth tips:

Even my green slimer (which was at death's door just a couple months ago) has bounced back nicely:

[Bicyclebill]

Keep an eye on your heater for calcification buildup. 2 part runs the risk of seizing up pumps if you increase faster than corals uptake, without your readings being higher.


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[The ReefBox]

Hey john how is your coralline growth? 

[Lexinverts]

Where do you keep your alk? If you are keeping it above 8, I suspect that you might be having some precipitation as Bill suggested. I tried to keep my tank at 9 with BRS 2-part and had lots of precipitation between 8 and 9, so that I was dosing huge amounts per day. I ended up with lots of trouble with pumps seizing up. When I dropped it back to 7.5-8.0, the problem went away and I still got good growth.

[SuncrestReef]

16 minutes ago, Bicyclebill said:

Keep an eye on your heater for calcification buildup. 2 part runs the risk of seizing up pumps if you increase faster than corals uptake, without your readings being higher.

 

5 minutes ago, viper55 said:

Hey john how is your coralline growth? 

 

4 minutes ago, Lexinverts said:

Where do you keep your alk? If you are keeping it above 8, I suspect that you might be having some precipitation as Bill suggested. I tried to keep my tank at 9 with BRS 2-part and had lots of precipitation between 8 and 9, so that I was dosing huge amounts per day. I ended up with lots of trouble with pumps seizing up. When I dropped it back to 7.5-8.0, the problem went away and I still got good growth.

Thanks all for the input.  I do quarterly maintenance on my pumps, heaters, and skimmer.  I haven't noticed too much precipitation buildup, mostly just sponges and detritus.  I have spares for almost everything (except the skimmer) so I just swap out all the pumps every 3 months, clean the ones from the tank and put them on the shelf for the next quarterly swap.

My alk is currently at 8.1, down over the past month from about 8.5.

The coralline growth has been pretty good lately, with about 80% of rock surface now solid purple.

[SuncrestReef]

I also posted my question on R2R, and Randy Holmes-Farley just replied that normal alk consumption is 0.5 to 4 dKH per day.  I hadn't been able to find any basic guidelines like this before, so I'm glad to know.

[Deuce00]

I think your ALK consumption seems great. I’ve never seen a tank as young as yours  with so much coraline algae. 

[Hercules]

It all depends on your bioload, 1.3 kh drop per day sounds normal to me for a moderately stocked tank. Mine will drop roughly 2 points per day without dosing.