Dosing CA/ALK/MAG to your water change.....

[Tava176]

Does anyone think it is a good idea to add CA/alk/mag to the water you will use for a water change so that it is the same peramiters as your tank water?

It just seems like extra work to do a water change and then test (knowing that your peramiters will be off due to the new water) and then fiddle around with getting those peramiters back where you wnat them.

I think it may make more sense to bring the water change water up to the same CA/Alk/MAG levels as your display before adding it to the tank.... I mean, we make sure the salinity is equal...why not everything else?

Your thoughts and comments?



Thanks all!

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

One can add it to the new water, or the tank, as necessary. For years I did the latter, but now that I make up 88 gallons of new salt water (Instant Ocean) at a time, and have cheap sources of calcium and magnesium, I just add a fixed amount of Dowflake and magnesium chloride (MAG Flake) to it for every batch (without any testing). I actually have the specified amounts posted on the wall over the containers.

 

[The Reefer91]

i was wondering the same thing

 

[10" Red Devil]

Well wise man once say nothing worth while come easy or something like that. So yeah I make sure my water Im changing is the same params as the tank. Course Im doing delicate sps so they need strong stability. If it were a tank full of softies, I would not worry about it too much.

 

[Tava176]

Thanks for the replys. I as just thinking that it would be less stress on the fish and corals to NOT have to dose after a water change. I do not have a lot of CA loving livestock. I have been monitoring my CA levels and my tank will only go from 430 down to 410 in 3 days. So It is really only using 10ppm of CA a day. Therefore, I dose Randy's 2 part solution (recipe 1) every 3 days (about .8 of a cup).

I have used his calcuator to design a handy spreadsheet that will tell me how much to add for for my 93 gallon water volume depending on how much I need to raise the levels. I do 30 gallon water changes, so I will figure out how much is needed to bring that up to 430ppm as well.