LPS and soft coral dosing

[Ricety22]

Is it necessary? I want to have a frogspawn as my first coral in a 10 gallon nano. Do I need to dose anything. I think I read somewhere that frogs and hammers pull calcium from the water. Also, would frogspawn be happy under a par38 like this one? https://www.amazon.com/ABI-Aquarium-Light-10000K-Actinic/dp/B00CXTZN2QThanks

[ReefSafeSolutions]

Following along...I've been wondering the same thing. I've read they don't use as much calcium and alk as SPS, which makes me think water changes would be sufficient to replace nutrients. But I'm curious to see what the pros have to say!

[Elizabeth94]

You would need to test your water to see if dosing is necessary. With a tank that size and a few lps, water changes once a week will be enough. But I still recommend you test your alk and cal once your tank starts to fill up.

 

Cant comment on the light, I dont have much experience with Par 38s.

[metrokat]

The recommendation of 400-420 calcium and 8-11 dKH is a norm for all corals. Just like ~78 degree temperature and 35ppt salinity.

 

The dosing becomes important when corals uptake calcium and carbonate to build skeleton and tissue. Also, coralline algae is a huge consumer of alk. So it is not accurate to say that one can get by without dosing if you run a softy tank. However what is important is that the depletion of cal/alk may be less as the needs of LPS and softies are less than that of SPS which are all hard skeleton growth. This depletion can be easily compensated with water changes. These are general comments though - if you have a ton of LPS like a gigantic hammer with 55 heads, your consumption will be higher than if you had a few SPS frags.

 

The best way to determine your dosing needs (or not) is to do a water change and measure your parameters. Measure daily till your next water change. THis gives you a baseline of how much your tank is using. If you find that towards the end of the time period and towards your water change, the depletion is a lot, then you could potentially dose appropriate amounts on the last couple of days before a change.

Alternatively, you can dose daily to keep the parameters as they were right after a water change.