Dosing question?

[justinkdenny]

I have been checking my alkalinity daily and using my hanna checker,  I have decided I am losing about 0.1 dkh a day.  I used the tropic marin dosing calculator and in the pic below, it shows I need to add 1.32 ml a day for 7 gallons of water.  I have a 10 gallon aquarium but I'm assuming rock and sand displacement will make it about 7 gallon.  What does the number mean circled in red? 0,28*dkh

Does that mean that it will raise it 0.28 dkh at that size of dosage? I don't understand why the comma and asterisk.  If that's the case, I need to dose much less.

 

Thanks in advance,

Justin

[Cannedfish]

Honestly, I would start off at .25 - .50 ml a day and wait about three days till you see what is happening, and adjust from there. I'm not a dosing expert by any means, but whenever I start up dosing, or change products, I do about half the recommended dosing and slowly increase the volume. Worse case scenario, the alk continues to drop, but it was dropping anyways (since you weren't dosing). I feel like that is preferable to an initial large alk spike, which can hugely negative affects. 

 

Just for reference, my tank is 10 gallons (which I figure is 8 gallons of true water volume), and  contains a fair amount of coral (mainly SPS) and I'm currently dosing 3ml of All-for-reef a day.

[mitten_reef]

@Cannedfish has been dialing in on his all-for-reef dosing. Maybe he has some insights on the values and dosages.  
 

 

[jservedio]

Yes, it means 1.32ml will raise your entire tanks alkalinity by .28 dKH. The comma is because Tropic Marin isn't 'Merican and those Euros hate decimal points. The degree sign is because the "d" in "dKH" stands for "degrees" and "KH" is for "Carbonate Hardness" when you speak German.

 

If you are only using 0.1 dKH/day in alkalinity, I wouldn't even bother dosing, or at most dosing once a week at the halfway point between water changes. My alkalinity fluctuates by at least 1/2 dKH a day depending on evaporation and how often my ATO kicks on/off (which is what is dosing my tank) and occasionally a full dKH if my ATO runs out of water and I don't get around to refilling it until the next day or my pump clogs and I don't notice it or feel like fixing it.

 

If your SPS is suffering, it isn't because of a 3/4 dKH change in alkalinity over the course of an entire week.

[justinkdenny]

7 minutes ago, jservedio said:

Yes, it means 1.32ml will raise your entire tanks alkalinity by .28 dKH. The comma is because Tropic Marin isn't 'Merican and those Euros hate decimal points. The degree sign is because the "d" in "dKH" stands for "degrees" and "KH" is for "Carbonate Hardness" when you speak German.

 

If you are only using 0.1 dKH/day in alkalinity, I wouldn't even bother dosing, or at most dosing once a week at the halfway point between water changes. My alkalinity fluctuates by at least 1/2 dKH a day depending on evaporation and how often by ATO kicks on/off (which is what is dosing my tank) and occasionally a full dKH if my ATO runs out of water and I don't get around to refilling it until the next day or my pump clogs and I don't notice it or feel like fixing it.

 

If your SPS is suffering, it isn't because of a 3/4 dKH change in alkalinity over the course of an entire week.

Actually my sps are still growing good and my bubblegum has got much better polyp extension at the base again and is coloring back up.  Thanks again for the help in my other post.  I've been monitoring my alk for a while now since I have changed salts that are more natural to seawater.  Corals are growing and coraline growing good so I knew at somepoint I'll need to either increase water changes per week or dose to keep thing stable.

[jservedio]

9 minutes ago, justinkdenny said:

 Corals are growing and coraline growing good so I knew at somepoint I'll need to either increase water changes per week or dose to keep thing stable.

Since you know the alkalinity of what your saltwater mixes up to and how much alkalinity you use on a daily basis, you can figure out exactly where your alkalinity will settle by doing water changes of x gallons every y number of days with some basic algebra. As long as your alkalinity settles at an acceptable number, you don't have to dose. If it isn't an acceptable number, you figure out exactly how many days you can go without a water change to keep it acceptable without dosing. Once the water changes required to keep your alkalinity in line start getting too much, that's when you start adding in dosing. That dosing can start at once a week, twice a week, etc. by hand and you just keep reassessing every few weeks as usage increases until you get to the point where you are having to dose daily to keep your alkalinity at an acceptable level. At that point, you should consider getting a dosing pump because it's a huge pain in the ass to do it manually if you aren't around all the time. I'm out of town for like a month out of the year and my SPS would start to STN missing just a couple days of dosing, so I absolutely rely on automation to keep the tank running.

 

Since dosing pumps are way less accurate at tiny doses, you can dilute your additives using RODI to make your daily dose much larger. For example, if you use 1ml per day, you can mix 0.9 liters of water with 100 ml of your additive and now you can dose 10ml, which is much easier for your pump to be accurate with.

 

Start slow and try and remember all of that algebra from freshmen year of high school - you'll actually use it.

[FISHnChix]

2 hours ago, jservedio said:

Since dosing pumps are way less accurate at tiny doses, you can dilute your additives using RODI to make your daily dose much larger. For example, if you use 1ml per day, you can mix 0.9 liters of water with 100 ml of your additive and now you can dose 10ml, which is much easier for your pump to be accurate with.

This doesn't get mentioned enough.  Especially when people start out with cheaper dosers like the jeabos that pump a million ml a minute..

 

 

One thing that gets preached here a lot is to pick a salt that has the parameters that you want to keep .. if you do that and rely on wc for replacing alk and ca that will never work. Well unless you do 100 percent wc every week😏..

[mitten_reef]

3 hours ago, jservedio said:

Yes, it means 1.32ml will raise your entire tanks alkalinity by .28 dKH. The comma is because Tropic Marin isn't 'Merican and those Euros hate decimal points. The degree sign is because the "d" in "dKH" stands for "degrees" and "KH" is for "Carbonate Hardness" when you speak German.

 

If you are only using 0.1 dKH/day in alkalinity, I wouldn't even bother dosing, or at most dosing once a week at the halfway point between water changes. My alkalinity fluctuates by at least 1/2 dKH a day depending on evaporation and how often my ATO kicks on/off (which is what is dosing my tank) and occasionally a full dKH if my ATO runs out of water and I don't get around to refilling it until the next day or my pump clogs and I don't notice it or feel like fixing it.

 

If your SPS is suffering, it isn't because of a 3/4 dKH change in alkalinity over the course of an entire week.

 

2 hours ago, jservedio said:

Since you know the alkalinity of what your saltwater mixes up to and how much alkalinity you use on a daily basis, you can figure out exactly where your alkalinity will settle by doing water changes of x gallons every y number of days with some basic algebra. As long as your alkalinity settles at an acceptable number, you don't have to dose. If it isn't an acceptable number, you figure out exactly how many days you can go without a water change to keep it acceptable without dosing. Once the water changes required to keep your alkalinity in line start getting too much, that's when you start adding in dosing. That dosing can start at once a week, twice a week, etc. by hand and you just keep reassessing every few weeks as usage increases until you get to the point where you are having to dose daily to keep your alkalinity at an acceptable level. At that point, you should consider getting a dosing pump because it's a huge pain in the ass to do it manually if you aren't around all the time. I'm out of town for like a month out of the year and my SPS would start to STN missing just a couple days of dosing, so I absolutely rely on automation to keep the tank running.

 

Since dosing pumps are way less accurate at tiny doses, you can dilute your additives using RODI to make your daily dose much larger. For example, if you use 1ml per day, you can mix 0.9 liters of water with 100 ml of your additive and now you can dose 10ml, which is much easier for your pump to be accurate with.

 

Start slow and try and remember all of that algebra from freshmen year of high school - you'll actually use it.

^THIS!

 

These two posts should be added as an appendix to your TOTM feature, very well written and explained. This covers the pre-understanding of how and when one should start dosing really well. 

[justinkdenny]

16 hours ago, Cannedfish said:

Honestly, I would start off at .25 - .50 ml a day and wait about three days till you see what is happening, and adjust from there. I'm not a dosing expert by any means, but whenever I start up dosing, or change products, I do about half the recommended dosing and slowly increase the volume. Worse case scenario, the alk continues to drop, but it was dropping anyways (since you weren't dosing). I feel like that is preferable to an initial large alk spike, which can hugely negative affects. 

 

Just for reference, my tank is 10 gallons (which I figure is 8 gallons of true water volume), and  contains a fair amount of coral (mainly SPS) and I'm currently dosing 3ml of All-for-reef a day.

I'm glad you commented Cannedfish.  I have followed your tank since I found nanoreef.com and have read your build thread multiple times.  I agree that I should take it slow on the dosing.  Quick question,  do you still do the daily small water changes?

[justinkdenny]

16 hours ago, jservedio said:

 

If you are only using 0.1 dKH/day in alkalinity, I wouldn't even bother dosing, or at most dosing once a week at the halfway point between water changes. My alkalinity fluctuates by at least 1/2 dKH a day depending on evaporation and how often my ATO kicks on/off (which is what is dosing my tank) and occasionally a full dKH if my ATO runs out of water and I don't get around to refilling it until the next day or my pump clogs and I don't notice it or feel like fixing it.

So what is an acceptable alk swing?  I hear people preaching " keep it stable"  but I don't know what that acceptable variation is daily and weekly?

[jservedio]

1 hour ago, justinkdenny said:

So what is an acceptable alk swing?  I hear people preaching " keep it stable"  but I don't know what that acceptable variation is daily and weekly?

Everyone is going to have a different answer to this, but for me, no more than a swing of 0.5 dkh down and then back up and no more than a change of 1 dkh a week during water change. But, everyone has a different opinion.

 

You should aim for as little as possible, winning reason. The less alk you use daily, the easier it is to maintain.

[mitten_reef]

44 minutes ago, justinkdenny said:

So what is an acceptable alk swing?  I hear people preaching " keep it stable"  but I don't know what that acceptable variation is daily and weekly?

this is my personal opinion on how I’d define some of these commonly used terms. there aren’t any definitive answers that I’ve come across, not that I’ve done any research on them per se. 

A swing implies that there is a sudden change to the level, the time period of which is NOT defined. The stories usually go, I end up with an alk swing today because the dosing pump stuck on (ex. forgot to shut off after priming the line, done that myself).  So typically, a swing would seem to occur within 24-48 hours. 

Then there’s alk spike (or alk drop), which implies that the level fell out of acceptable range for whatever reasons. To me, this doesn’t have to be a sudden occurrence. You can have a spike after a long period of overdosing or or drop from under-dosing (lax on routine testing,  done this too 😅). 

 

I’d encourage the view in which we look at acceptable range of alkalinity, vs acceptable swing.   where I’d say if you alk level floats around 7-8.5 throughout your water change period, you should be ok. The tighter you can keep this range, the more “stable” the system would be.  AND the more safety room you have should you get in a little doser/dosing mishap. 
 

I look forward to other’s opinions on this subject, as it seems that we as hobbyists stress avoiding the swings so much, yet there doesn’t seem to be a well-defined guidance on what they all mean. 

[justinkdenny]

37 minutes ago, mitten_reef said:

this is my personal opinion on how I’d define some of these commonly used terms. there aren’t any definitive answers that I’ve come across, not that I’ve done any research on them per se. 

A swing implies that there is a sudden change to the level, the time period of which is NOT defined. The stories usually go, I end up with an alk swing today because the dosing pump stuck on (ex. forgot to shut off after priming the line, done that myself).  So typically, a swing would seem to occur within 24-48 hours. 

Then there’s alk spike (or alk drop), which implies that the level fell out of acceptable range for whatever reasons. To me, this doesn’t have to be a sudden occurrence. You can have a spike after a long period of overdosing or or drop from under-dosing (lax on routine testing,  done this too 😅). 

 

I’d encourage the view in which we look at acceptable range of alkalinity, vs acceptable swing.   where I’d say if you alk level floats around 7-8.5 throughout your water change period, you should be ok. The tighter you can keep this range, the more “stable” the system would be.  AND the more safety room you have should you get in a little doser/dosing mishap. 
 

I look forward to other’s opinions on this subject, as it seems that we as hobbyists stress avoiding the swings so much, yet there doesn’t seem to be a well-defined guidance on what they all mean. 

My new saltwater tested today at 7.3 using hanna checker.  My alk has been dropping 0.1 pretty consistently per day.  My tank was at 6.8 today so I felt safe to do the 1 gallon water change.  When I was doing water changes with reef crystals, the new water was testing like around 12 dkh I think. 

[mitten_reef]

7 hours ago, justinkdenny said:

My new saltwater tested today at 7.3 using hanna checker.  My alk has been dropping 0.1 pretty consistently per day.  My tank was at 6.8 today so I felt safe to do the 1 gallon water change.  When I was doing water changes with reef crystals, the new water was testing like around 12 dkh I think. 

not sure if i see any question in here.  what's your actual target level, or range.  after the 1-gallon wc, what did that 7.3 water raise your tank's alk to?   

 

As pointed out earlier:

23 hours ago, FISHnChix said:

One thing that gets preached here a lot is to pick a salt that has the parameters that you want to keep .. if you do that and rely on wc for replacing alk and ca that will never work. Well unless you do 100 percent wc every week😏..

saying it another way, the premise that your freshly-mixed saltwater should have enough element to replenish what you've lost thru consumption depends on the fact that your salt mix needs to be slightly elevated, compared to your target value.  And once you do 10-15% wc, it gets diluted down to the right concentration.  else, your value will drift downward slowly. 

[justinkdenny]

54 minutes ago, mitten_reef said:

not sure if i see any question in here.  what's your actual target level, or range.  after the 1-gallon wc, what did that 7.3 water raise your tank's alk to?   

Not a question. Just giving some stats.  My endgame is to keep my levels where my salt mixes so when I do a water change, it doesn't change any parameters.   I want to maintain levels with dosing and use water changes just to remove unwanted contaminants and add trace minerals. 

[FISHnChix]

40 minutes ago, justinkdenny said:

Not a question. Just giving some stats.  My endgame is to keep my levels where my salt mixes so when I do a water change, it doesn't change any parameters.   I want to maintain levels with dosing and use water changes just to remove unwanted contaminants and add trace minerals. 

Perfect.  Imo you must dose to keep a stable reef. Good to start when your dkh drops about 1 per week. And good to start and learn before you get a ton of money in coral. But if that's your goal I would switch to a lower reading salt . I like aiming for a salt mix that mixes around 8ish alk.. leaves room for error if you mess up the dosing. Anything over 11 is playing with fire imo..

[Cannedfish]

On 7/18/2020 at 8:36 AM, justinkdenny said:

I'm glad you commented Cannedfish.  I have followed your tank since I found nanoreef.com and have read your build thread multiple times.  I agree that I should take it slow on the dosing.  Quick question,  do you still do the daily small water changes?

No, I no longer do small daily water changes. Although, I don't think they are necessarily a bad thing, I think I've learned a lot about my tank in the last year which has resulted in fewer water changes. Mainly, I think the daily water changes coupled with bacteria and light carbon dosing (through KZ supplements) resulted in a nutrient imbalance (and low nutrient issues) that impart caused my dino outbreak. Since I reduced my water change schedule and generally run higher nutrients the dinos that had periodically popped up have completely gone away. Additionally, I have yet to see any algae issues. Furthermore, although I still do more water changes than most (1-2 gallons about every 5 days), I kow use the corals and film algae on the glass as water change indicators. If the acros are showing less than normal PE or there is a larger than normal build up of film algae on the glass, I do a quick gallon or two WC. 

[Cannedfish]

On 7/18/2020 at 7:56 PM, FISHnChix said:

Perfect.  Imo you must dose to keep a stable reef. Good to start when your dkh drops about 1 per week. And good to start and learn before you get a ton of money in coral. 

I kinda second this opinion. Although, I also agree with the other posters that at this point dosing is not necessary, its also a good time to learn the ins and outs of dosing, before you have a tank stocked with expensive coral. My caveat would be, if you are going to start dosing for the latter reason (to learn and dial in your dosing), you should fully commit and use a dosing pump, otherwise I feel like this is kind of a useless exercise.  

[FISHnChix]

31 minutes ago, Cannedfish said:

Although, I also agree with the other posters that at this point dosing is not necessary,

I guess it depends on what one considers necessary .😉

 

using .7dhk in a week isnt horrible if you are religous about a weekly water changes. If life happens and you miss a week your now down 1.4 dkh that's too much imo..  not saying a tank is going to crash from a drop of that level over that time span but I believe you should be able to leave a tank alone for at least 2 weeks and not have your alk drop by 1.4 dkh 🤷‍♂️.. 

[justinkdenny]

On 7/18/2020 at 7:56 PM, FISHnChix said:

Perfect.  Imo you must dose to keep a stable reef. Good to start when your dkh drops about 1 per week. And good to start and learn before you get a ton of money in coral. But if that's your goal I would switch to a lower reading salt . I like aiming for a salt mix that mixes around 8ish alk.. leaves room for error if you mess up the dosing. Anything over 11 is playing with fire imo..

I have switched salts already.   I think reef crystals gave me an alk spike so I switched to brightwell salt which mixes at a much more ocean water like parameters. Thanks