To all 40 gallon, 2 part dosing reefers

[reefrox]

Hi all.

 

Just asking as a general guage to help me assess. How much millilitres of calcium and alkalinity 2 part do you dose your 40ish gallon tank to get it to whatever level you want it? (Please let me know if it is a lps, mixed reef or sps dominant).

 

I know all tanks are different and all salts are different etc but im just looking to see if im swinging in the same ballpark as im not able to get my 2 part right and need some sort of rough roigh benchmarks.

 

Thanks for any feedback

 

(Ps im running a mixed reef reefer 170. All pretty small frags. Tanks about 5 months old. 90pct just cleared out snotty dinos. Lots of calcification on pumps, glass, heaters etc. Mag is fine. Just cant keep alk or calc up dosing sometimes more than 100ml a day. Very little coral growth. Coraline is hardly growing and things like snails that i introduced that had lots of coraline on it has receded to very minimal)

[Polarcollision]

seems high to me, esp. if you have very few coral. To compare, I have good sized birdsnests, lots of stony corals and dose 1.5 mlx12= 18mL each/day on 24 gallons. so scaled up that would roughly be 40 mL on 50 gallons.

 

Something else is going on. How much do you trust your test results? Wait, what are your levels of alkalinity, Ca, and Mg? What levels are you trying to hit?

 

possible precipitation. Do you add alkalinity first, wait a few minutes then add calcium?

[masssnapz]

Your dosing a 100ml a day and cant keep it up ? Get a new test kit. I have a sps dominant 40b and only dose 36ml of alk a day to keep it at 9.5dkh and i dose calc manually every 2 days to keep it above 400. Maybe your mag test is screwed up. If its not higher than 1300 or something like that than you will get messed up readings on alk and calc.

[reefrox]

I am using red sea Pro test kits. I also had my local reef store test and cofirmed my results. My magnesium seemed to be okay. Started at 1340 at the begining of april. Today its at 1280. (Brs instructions mentioned to add a whole bottle of mag after dosing the first bottle of calc and alk which ive just finished i beleive, but that doesent make sense).

 

Cacl kept dropping to 330 - 370 thus i increased dosing. At one point it dropped to 290. Had to add like 250ml calc to bring it up to 420 over a couple days. Alk was fine but then started dropping to 7.7. Which is fine i guess but maybe a bit low.

 

As of today (just after a water change which had calc od 375), my calcl is at 400, alk is 7.8 and mag is 1280.

 

Always get a lot of calcification on pumps and glass with dosing 100+ calc and alk each day. Last few days since ive been busy just dosed 100 calc and mag each day for the past 4 day.

 

Normally i add the calc first. Then wait half an hour to an hour and then add the alk. Both to a high flow area..

 

Ps i have 17 tiiny sps frags. A small hammer, torch, xenia, gsp and few zoa frags. Nothing big.

Small clump of cheato in the sump. And Dinos on the rock that a not going away. I suck em up but may need to do a lights out for 3 days or something.

 

I though this would be easier : (

[reefrox]

Any thoughts anyone?

[ManGups]

The Ca and alk is precipitating that is why you white all over which is caco3

 

Stop dosing and change water over a period of few days.

 

Test fresh saltwater for ca , alk and Mg .. And kept doing water changes till tank water is the same as Fred made saltwater..

Red Sea blue bucket paraders are close to NSW so they are very good parameters to run the tank at.

 

Alk at 7.8, ca 400 and mg at 1280 ppm are perfect parameters to grow anything ...alk 7.7 is not low - NSW has alk at 7 and the Great Barrier Reef grows at 7 dKh

 

You do not need alk at 9 etc to grow corals - in fact in UNLS systems high alk caused alk burn in corals.

 

Also Mg consumption is very low as compared to alk and Ca ... So if u read mg suddenly in the lower range in a few days .. It is 100% a testing error.

 

You really need to read randy holmes reef keepin guide. Dosing is not putting stuff on the tank in one go.. If u need to boost say Ca by 50 or wahever do over period of days and not dump in one go .. Same for alk and Mg.

[reefrox]

Thank you. Will try ur reccomemdations above and will re-read carefully on randy holmes. I did rush it a bit initially as i wanted to develop coraline faster. Ill tale it much slower this time around.

[Pjanssen]

Agreed that Randy Holmes is awesome, but he tends to be very technical, and if you are like me, find it hard to keep up, so to speak. What are you dosing with? I use natureef 2 part and dose 5ml (one capful) once a week, midway between weekly 20% water change. This keeps my Alk around 7.9-8.0 and calcium around 400-410. I do keep my mag up above 1300 though.

[reefrox]

Agreed that Randy Holmes is awesome, but he tends to be very technical, and if you are like me, find it hard to keep up, so to speak. What are you dosing with? I use natureef 2 part and dose 5ml (one capful) once a week, midway between weekly 20% water change. This keeps my Alk around 7.9-8.0 and calcium around 400-410. I do keep my mag up above 1300 though.

Yeah a little technical. Ive read that article before and tried to follow but i guess i went wrong somewhere.

 

But funny how even 100ml calc and it doesent go up that much. Im using Bulk reef supply 2 part with magnesium.