Do you dose your nano tanks?

[Jakesaw]

Since I got a reaction to my post, I'll do a follow up post.  One fish jumped out, another died within a week ( still not sure why - perhaps the stress of Large clown hosting my Bicolor blenny while he lived in rock hole ) and nitrates started declining again. 

 

Out of frustration went to local coral specialty store.  The owner recommended trying out 3 frags and dosing gatorade sized cap full of phyto daily.  Been doing that about 10 days and my nitrates have started to climb and I was in the 5-10 range vs trending back to zero when fish died

 

My GSP ( ish - I think it's more of a cousin species as the extensions have never been a star but more of a green grassy extension ) comes out every day now when the lights go on, and my other corals seem to be doing fine though not great yet.  

 

Larger tank may have been easier to keep things stable, but more costly when mistakes happen.  Getting some healthy looking algae growing and doing occasional water changes.  Still haven't settled on a routine for it yet.

 

I also found a strange wormish / octopusish species on front wall of my aquarium ( about an inch in size ).  Pretty cool and I have no idea where it came from. It disappeared somewhere else in the tank, but I know it's in there lurking around doing whatever it's designed to do.

[DevilDuck]

2 hours ago, Jakesaw said:

Since I got a reaction to my post, I'll do a follow up post.  One fish jumped out, another died within a week ( still not sure why - perhaps the stress of Large clown hosting my Bicolor blenny while he lived in rock hole ) and nitrates started declining again. 

 

Out of frustration went to local coral specialty store.  The owner recommended trying out 3 frags and dosing gatorade sized cap full of phyto daily.  Been doing that about 10 days and my nitrates have started to climb and I was in the 5-10 range vs trending back to zero when fish died

 

My GSP ( ish - I think it's more of a cousin species as the extensions have never been a star but more of a green grassy extension ) comes out every day now when the lights go on, and my other corals seem to be doing fine though not great yet.  

 

Larger tank may have been easier to keep things stable, but more costly when mistakes happen.  Getting some healthy looking algae growing and doing occasional water changes.  Still haven't settled on a routine for it yet.

 

I also found a strange wormish / octopusish species on front wall of my aquarium ( about an inch in size ).  Pretty cool and I have no idea where it came from. It disappeared somewhere else in the tank, but I know it's in there lurking around doing whatever it's designed to do.

 

I'd love to dose live phyto, but it seems a very expensive way to increase nutrients.

 

When my tank was the Fluval 13.5g I dosed the following:

 

Testing is done with salifert for Nitrate and Hanna ULR checker for Phosphates. I use Brightwell NeoNitrate and NeoPhos just because they are readily available and the results were immediate.

 

For macros, I use Fuana Marin Carbo-Calcium for Alk and Calcium off a Kamoer X1 doser. I needed something that didn't add extra magnesium since the salt I used, Fritz RPM, was very high in Mg. I didn't does much maybe 4ml a day. The Kamoer X1 was inexpensive and can dose down to .5 ml. The only drawback is that it does not have an internal clock. So whenever the unit loses power it will stop dosing and you will need to reset the clock using an app and bluetooth connection. They have a newer with expensive unit that does have an internal clock and wifi connectivity.

 

All other trace elements are provided by water changes every 2-3 weeks.

 

[Jakesaw]

1 hour ago, DevilDuck said:

 

I'd love to dose live phyto, but it seems a very expensive way to increase nutrients.

 

When my tank was the Fluval 13.5g I dosed the following:

 

 

I hear ya.  When the guy talked about dosing anything, I was thinking about my low budget tank goals.  But also want to know what it takes to run a reef tank.  It looks like for my 10 gallon, the phyto I got locally was 10 bucks and will probably last 3 - 4 weeks with hindsight.   Don't know if I can cut back over time - still learning.  But the phyto has so far given the desired effect for my 10 gallon tank of increasing nutrients in water.    

 

I'm always looking for least expensive ways for desired outcome.  

[blasterman]

My 20L consumes 2tsp of calcium daily. With inmates like a 10" birdsnest and countless montipora colonies its certainly not a common tank. If I performed water changes to keep up with calcium consumption I would have 0 nutrients in the tank, nitrate and phosphate would zero out and all corals would die.

 

Most nano reefs are softie and LPS dominant and hence don't consume much calcium. A softie dominant tank will barely move calcium and mag at all, but it will consume alk as nitrate gets produced.

 

The question is what should you dose, and as I've lectured before you dose what your corals need, not what marketing depts say you need.  Water changes, even conservative ones can keep up with 99% of nano tank calcium needs. Alk....less certain. Younger or higher nutrient tanks can deplete alk quite rapidly and make water changes impractical. Keeping nitrate and phosphate in stable ranges is mandatory for healthy tanks and lots of water changes disrupt this. I personally don't do water changes, have trouble keeping elevated nutrients and have to export buckets of SPS.

 

Only trace elements I've found worth dosing are Iodine and Strontium. Both seem to help softies a bit via personal observation. SPS don't need either.

 

 

[Clown79]

I dosed my nano tanks with esv bionic 2 part. That was my 10g, 20g, and 25g. The amount of alk used in a day made it necessary to dose to maintain alk stability.

[Isuckatthis]

I have a question I got no raw sera for I dowsed my alk spiked to a 16 from a 12 should I quite dosing both parts?

[ubpr]

On 7/15/2018 at 10:48 PM, MrObscura said:

What are the warning signs to look for in regards to low cal/alk? What kind of symptoms do corals display besides slow growth?

Testing, even with API test, is better than nothing. They are inexpensive and last for a lot of tests.

 

With lower alkalinity should be better coral expansion, with too high contraction. My zoas prefer in the middle, 8-9 dKH, they look then much better. Too low alkalinity, below 6 dKH, and tank can start looking as with "old tank syndrome", with not enough fuel to get the things going.

 

For some time I kept SPS, LPS and soft corals in three separate picos. Only sps tank required dosing, and when they grow fast, they needed daily supplementing. More frequent would be even better, for stability. One of LFS had noticeable improvement after switching to 12 times a day dosing.

 

The same for Ca, add as needed. Testing will show tank consumption rate and dosing Ca may be not necessary at all or, if needed, from 2x a week to daily. No signs for it to replace dosing, very slow sign is dying coraline algae.

 

With not enough water changes to restore natural saltwater ratio, relationship between Alk, Ca+Sr and Mg could change, then maintaining alkalinity should become difficult. Read about "Big 3" for a reef tank, for example Myka's Guide for Ca, Mg and alkalinity.

 

For very small tanks with very little evaporation using dry additives is impossible, they should be dissolved in RO water. Have to use liquid additives as C-Balance or ESV B-Ionic. Manual dosing for low tech tanks, for higher tech I have seen pictures of reef vase with more than two lines of dosing with a pump.