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Water changes, alk, mag, and calcium


nanofish1

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when I am doing water changes, I usually test for alk, mag, and calcium. However every time I do (20-25%) water changes with reef crystals or Red Sea pro salt all of my levels tend to drop. Is this normal?

For example, let's say if I had alk 9 before water change, my new testing (red sea test kit) would be 7 or something lower than tthis. So in this case, do you guys put alk additives in the newly mixed salt water before adding it to the tank? Or do you just put the new salt water into the tank and then add the additives in the tank? (Same goes with calcium and magnesium) Wouldn't this big swing stress out the fish/ corals? How are you doing the testing/ water changes? Also if I were to add the additives in the newly mixed salt before adding it back to my main tank, I would have to test it many times to get the exact/ similar levels. How do you avoid multiple testing? There must be a more efficient way?! Please explain this in detail. (Btw my usual cal level= 400 mag=1400 alk = 9) Thank you

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Most logically way would be to add to the fresh saltwater to get it up to the tank water parameters. It looks you will need to test minimum 3 times.

1- test tank water

2- test fresh saltwater

Dose fresh saltwater

3- test dosed fresh saltwater

 

I don't personally do this but would like to hear what others say...

 

I saw a thread at reef2reef where people avoid water changes and dose trace elements and depend greatly on nutrient export to keep phosphates and nitrates.

Not sure how it exactly Woeks orks because you will have to dose every other trace element at some point in time.

 

Another method is to changes very small amount of water very frequently so that is does not affect tank parameters quite a bit.

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