PH, Alk, Borax and Acid oh-my

[waterbear]

Alk and pH will move together so you want to raise the alk to the high end of where you want to be when the pH is high and then lower the pH to the proper level. Your alk should then be fine. Also realize that at your cya reading of about 40 ppm you will test about 10 ppm higher on the TA than it actually is. I would not worry about 10 ppm but if your CYA is high it can seem to contribute quite a bit to the ALK reading and IMHO, if the CYA is up around 60 or above then the correction for CYA might be worth considering. Easy way to do this (and IMHO, accurate enough) is to subtract 1/3 of your cya reading from your ALK reading when the pH is between 7.4-8.0 and 1/4 of the reading when it is between 7.0-7.2.....close enough for government work.
Getting your ALK to 130 and then lowering the pH was the way to go.