You need to keep adding the basing material until the colour has changed through grey to jet black. This reminds me why I don't use sodium carbonate for an A/B extraction. It DOES work, however I often have to add a lot of liquid to the mix to make the sodium carbonate soluble enough, so it's important not to add too much acid in the first place, or you'll end up with 2, maybe 3 times the amount of liquid you started off with. Also it's very important to reduce your collective soaks beforehand to aid in keeping liquids to a minimal. But you need to be able to shake the contents thoroughly without any foam forming on the top off the liquid, otherwise it's going to give your solvent a hard time.
Pulling alkaloids from large volumes of water is very time consuming and a lot less thorough.