Dosing help (first timer)

Lizzy_lray

Lizzy_lray

New member
Okay! So I have a new addition to my tank (branching hammer) I know this coral is going to need calcium and weekly water changes are not going to be sufficient like they are with my softies.

I've been reading up on dosing since I bought the coral (Friday) and I wanted to know if I need to start mag and alk to keep everything in balance. Also what about strontium and iodine? I want to do this correctly I am at the point where I've invested a lot of time a money into my reef and I do not want to miss anything or make a big mistake.
 
A single Lps isn't going to change anything..hell 10 Lps probably won't have a big impact. What size tank.
 
I have a 24g packed with Lps, Sofie's and Sps and never saw a change until I added small colonies of sps
 
Make sure you test first- always test what you dose. Plus, with weekly water changes there may not be a need to dose.
 
Yeah test. I actually bought all the 2 part dosing stuff in advance of my foray into SPS but I dont need any of it right now. My 15% water changes weekly in my biocube keep my levels sufficiently high for my LPS and zoa farms. I thought I would be lower in Calcium then I was but through weekly testing realized my corals were not sucking anything down to the point where I needed to dose.
 
I would test for mag, alk and calcium after your next WC. After a few days test again, try to develop a base line. Once you know for sure you need to supplement then decide what is best for your situation. FWIW I like to use salifert tests. good luck
 
gone fishin said:
I would test for mag, alk and calcium after your next WC. After a few days test again, try to develop a base line. Once you know for sure you need to supplement then decide what is best for your situation. FWIW I like to use salifert tests. good luck
Click to expand...


Does salifert sell a master kit by chance? I looked for one but no luck.
 
you need to test to see if you need to dose. I have a 120 gal. softie/lps reef and don't dose.
 
Never dose unless you know your parameters.

Test to see where you are, if levels are low, raise them and test again until they are at the range you want them to be.

24 hours later, test again and see how much of a change there was from your last test. This will give you a baseline as to how much your corals are consuming and how much you need to add daily. This mainly applies to Ca and Dkh. Understand the more corals you add, the more your demands will change. Especially with sps corals.

Magnesium is typically something you only need to dose occasionally as most water changes replenish it. Unless your my fully stocked tank of course...which slurps up Mg like a thirsty college freshman on spring break.
 
As a first step, considering your coral load, look into adding some kalkwasser to your top off water system. Kalkwasser is easy, cheap and mostly idiot proof (not calling you an idiot). Even if you overdose, it shouldn't hurt your tank, just make it cloudy for a day. That should hold you over for a long while. I didn't start dosing until I had some considerable sized SPS colonies.
 
Bring your mg up to 1300 by small doses. Then bring your alk up to 8.3, again by small doses. Always let any dose percolate through the system for 8 hours before re-testing. Once you've got those two, bring calcium to 420.

Then you can maintain it by putting 2 tsp of Mrs Wages Pickling Lime into your topoff reservoir---per gallon of ro/di in the reservoir. Precise measurement isn't critical: ONLY 2 tsp WILL dissolve, period. Stuff left will dissolve as you add more fresh water over time. Stir it only once and lid it tightly: you can use foam rubber strip for gasket around lines and wires.

Test your mg weekly. As long as it holds at 1300, the other two readings will stay locked: the alk won't budge and the kalk (Lime, which is calcium) will go on dissolving so the corals can suck it up.
 
BTW, do not dose strontium, iodine, etc. Your weekly water changes handle that and all the other trace elements in the most perfect way possible. Those supplements are available only for extremely advanced and specialized systems that have special needs. For the typical reef or fish-only in the first several years, no need of those. Dosing them, since they don't go away, can get your system way out of balance, sort of like going into a good car engine with a power wrench and loosening and tightening things at random. Nay! Just let the water changes handle the trace elements: your job is to watch the alkalinity buffer (which keeps the ph where it needs to be for dissolving the calcium), watch the calcium, and watch the magnesium levels. If those 3 are all spot-on, your water is as perfect as it needs to be.
 
Lizzy_lray said:
Okay! So I have a new addition to my tank (branching hammer) I know this coral is going to need calcium and weekly water changes are not going to be sufficient like they are with my softies.

I've been reading up on dosing since I bought the coral (Friday) and I wanted to know if I need to start mag and alk to keep everything in balance. Also what about strontium and iodine? I want to do this correctly I am at the point where I've invested a lot of time a money into my reef and I do not want to miss anything or make a big mistake.
Click to expand...

Everyone else has pretty much said what I was going to say (test test test before dosing anything) but a couple things...

Branching hammers, in my experience, are pretty slow growing corals. So even in the smallest of tanks, I don't see it using up a bunch of cal/alk. I would be apt to thing that your coralline algae calcium intake would outpace that of the hammer. Even if you don't have coral, coralline algae can drop your cal/alk levels enough to bleach out your coralline. So basically... you should test for cal/alk even if you don't have coral.

Also... noticed in your signature line "still cycling". Hopefully that's not true if you're adding coral?
 
kurt_n said:
Everyone else has pretty much said what I was going to say (test test test before dosing anything) but a couple things...



Branching hammers, in my experience, are pretty slow growing corals. So even in the smallest of tanks, I don't see it using up a bunch of cal/alk. I would be apt to thing that your coralline algae calcium intake would outpace that of the hammer. Even if you don't have coral, coralline algae can drop your cal/alk levels enough to bleach out your coralline. So basically... you should test for cal/alk even if you don't have coral.



Also... noticed in your signature line "still cycling". Hopefully that's not true if you're adding coral?
Click to expand...


No I was cycling back in December for some reason I cannot seem to update my sig from my iPhone.
 
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