What would you do in my shoes

[Gourami Swami]

Hello Nano-reef

For 3 months now, my reef has been running successfully on "dumb luck". My tank is a 6.8g AIO tank, with no fancy equipment yet. I have mixed corals, mostly soft and LPS, with 3 pieces of sps. maybe 10-15 corals total. I have seen great growth in some, and slow growth in others, but nothing has died, bleached, or receded. All have grown to some degree- and some have doubled or more in size, even SPS like my monti cap.

I have been doing 2 water changes of about 30% per week, one on sunday and one on wednesday, with regular instant ocean. I keep salinity at 1.025 ( measure w/ refractometer). Until now I had not been testing much of anything- but got Calcium and Alkalinity Hanna checkers for Christmas, and decided today to see what my numbers were like.

PRE-water change

Calcium 348

Alk 6.5

 

Post-Water change

Calcium 360

Alk 8.5

 

I am going to be doing more testing to confirm this, but it looks like my tank has been running with low calcium, and alk on the lower side, probably since I have added a lot of stony coral in the last 1.5 months. Seems like it consumes 10ppm-ish of calcium, and the calcium level never gets high enough with water changes alone. I have read I should be shooting for mid-400's in calcium- correct?

And the alkalinity- I have read many conflicting things, some say that 10 is good, some say should be a little lower.

 

So I have been thinking I need to change something about my routine, or perhaps add some equipment, to keep my calc and alk higher.

 

Here are the options I have been considering-

 

1) Do nothing- corals are growing, some may grow slowly but that's ok as long as they don't die. ( Thinking this problem may become worse as the corals grow though)

 

2) Switch to salt that mixes with higher calcium+alk. Idea being that my 2x/week water changes would keep the calc and alk high enough. This seems like perhaps the easiest method to me, if viable I would like to go this route.

 

3) Get an ATO with kalk or similar, to keep water level topped up while also keeping calc and alk up. Have been looking at the Hydor smart ato controller, the IM titanium controller, 

 

4) Set up a doser and dose for calc + alk. I don't like the idea of manually dosing daily, since I go away for weekends pretty often, and while I can get someone to feed/top off the tank, I wouldn't trust them to dose, since an OD could wipe out the tank.

 

What would you guys do if this was your tank? My budget to solve this issue is 100$ish. I should be able to set up an ato or doser for around that mark, from what I am seeing on amazon and BRS. I would prefer the most simple option, like switching salts, but I don't have much reefing experience and am having trouble figuring out which of these options make the most sense.

 

Thoughts?

Thanks

 

 

[DAP]

Option 2

Use a better salt mix, and just keep changing the water as you have been.  Try Red Sea Coral Pro.

Try that before doing anything else.  I have a 10 gallon, which holds 8 gallons of water after rock, etc, and I have been changing 60 percent weekly with Red Sea Coral Pro Salt, and it has been fine.

I have mostly LPS, with a few SPS.  Everything has been fine.  Tank has been running for over a year, and while my SPS probably doesnt grow as fast as others, it is noticeable growth and it is healthy. 

 

 

[Donny41]

Even with switching salts I think you'll end up running into the same issue in the long run. I was in the same situation as you, using instant ocean and just doing water changes and my numbers were similar to yours with ok alk but low calcium. I dosed alk and calcium until they were where I wanted them and then set up kalk in my ato. I actually just turned the ato with kalk on today so not entirely sure how it's going to work out but I viewed that as an easier option than manually dosing or setting up an automatic doser

[seabass]

While daily dosing might be ideal, manual dosing a couple of times a week should be adequate.  I wouldn't sweat being away on weekends.

 

You can save up for a couple of dosing pumps to automate it down the road.

 

For $100, I'd get a better salt mix, and two part solution.  I assume that you already have all your test kits.

LA Pro Reef Salt

E.S.V. B-Ionic

[falcooo]

Option 2. I have the same routine as you on my 10 gallon mixed reef, and all of my corals appear to be healthy. I use Reef Crystals however. Less room for error right now, you can always add the other options if need be down the road. But I'd say don't rock to boat too much if things are growing well.

[Clown79]

The first thing I would do is test your newly made salt water and then the tank after a waterchange. The alk and ca should be relatively close.

 

Those are your target numbers. 

 

Then test every day for alk to see what the corals are consuming.

 

That will give you a good idea how often and how much you need to dose.

It could be daily or a few times a week.

 

8.5 for alk is good. Ca is a bit low but I found that with IO salt.

 

 

[Fragmental]

4 hours ago, seabass said:

While daily dosing might be ideal, manual dosing a couple of times a week should be adequate.  I wouldn't sweat being away on weekends.

 

You can save up for a couple of dosing pumps to automate it down the road.

 

For $100, I'd get a better salt mix, and two part solution.  I assume that you already have all your test kits.

LA Pro Reef Salt

E.S.V. B-Ionic

Pretty much this ^

[Gourami Swami]

Okay guys, thanks for your responses. I searched around the forum a little and decided to give fritz reef pro mix a shot. I ordered the smallest bag, so if it doesn't do what I want for my numbers, I can try another one like Red Sea Coral Pro next. The fritz supposedly mixes with Cal in the mid 400's, so hoping it works well for me.

 

I think my next move is to get the ATO and use kalk in it to keep cal +alk up inbetween WC's. Or perhaps two-part, dosed on the days I don't do WC's. Kalk in the ATO sounds easier to me, but I have read from some people that it's easy to overdose this way? Any opinions on that?

[seabass]

37 minutes ago, Gourami Swami said:

Any opinions on that?

Kalk helps maintain alkalinity and calcium; but it doesn't work as well to raise levels.  It's probably a reasonable approach for a softy tank with some LPS (to help keep levels from dropping).  I find two part easier to hone in on targets than Kalk.  However, there are plenty of people successfully using Kalkwasser.

[Fragmental]

8 hours ago, Gourami Swami said:

Okay guys, thanks for your responses. I searched around the forum a little and decided to give fritz reef pro mix a shot. I ordered the smallest bag, so if it doesn't do what I want for my numbers, I can try another one like Red Sea Coral Pro next. The fritz supposedly mixes with Cal in the mid 400's, so hoping it works well for me.

 

I think my next move is to get the ATO and use kalk in it to keep cal +alk up inbetween WC's. Or perhaps two-part, dosed on the days I don't do WC's. Kalk in the ATO sounds easier to me, but I have read from some people that it's easy to overdose this way? Any opinions on that?

I agree with seabass. However another benefit of kalk that you don't get with two part dosing is the higher pH it maintains. I use balling dosing (three part dosing + trace element + sodium free reef salt). I then maintain pH using AquaForest build

[Gourami Swami]

9 hours ago, seabass said:

Kalk helps maintain alkalinity and calcium; but it doesn't work as well to raise levels.  It's probably a reasonable approach for a softy tank with some LPS (to help keep levels from dropping).  I find two part easier to hone in on targets than Kalk.  However, there are plenty of people successfully using Kalkwasser.

 

2 hours ago, Fragmental said:

I agree with seabass. However another benefit of kalk that you don't get with two part dosing is the higher pH it maintains. I use balling dosing (three part dosing + trace element + sodium free reef salt). I then maintain pH using AquaForest build

 

Cool, can I dose 2-part in the ATO in the same way that some people use kalk? Just figure out what I'm consuming, how much water is going into the tank, do the math and mix the ATO water to whatever percentage I need?

[seabass]

19 minutes ago, Gourami Swami said:

can I dose 2-part in the ATO in the same way that some people use kalk?

No.  But in theory, you could dose either alkalinity or calcium that way.  However, they call it two part because the parts can't be mixed together (they must be dosed separately).  Actually, they should call it three part, because magnesium also needs to be dosed (just not as often).

 

Here's a decent video about dosing two part:

 

[Gourami Swami]

3 minutes ago, seabass said:

No.  But in theory, you could dose either alkalinity or calcium that way.  However, they call it two part because the parts can't be mixed together (they must be dosed separately).  Actually, they should call it three part, because magnesium also needs to be dosed (just not as often).

 

Here's a decent video about dosing two part

 

Thanks, think I am going to start out w the Fritz salt and see what my numbers are looking like before and after WC days. Then guess I will decide on either 2part or kalk depending on how much my corals consume.

[NuisanceAlgaeCultivator]

Late to the game but FYI the instant ocean reef crystals shows these numbers: