Dosing Magnesium with Calcium 2-part?

[bondolo]

I have been dosing two part for years with dosing pumps. I manually dose magnesium but not consistently enough and the occasional magnesium drops result in some inorganic calcium depositing on pump impellers, etc.

Why can't I add magnesium to the calcium half of the two part solution?
I am curious why nobody does this. I do know that some people dose magnesium as a third part but never combined with the calcium part.

 

[disc1]

The magnesium supplement usually contains some mag sulfate. If it were just mag chloride and only mag chloride it would be OK to mix with the calcium. But if it contains any mag sulfate, like almost all mag supplements do, then you can't mix them because you'd end up precipitating calcium sulfate as it is not water soluble.

 

[bondolo]

Aha! Thank you for the answer. I have been wondering for years.

Indeed my Magnesium solution, the BRS recipe, contains both Magnesium sulfate and Magnesium chloride.

 

[Martin Kuhn]

As already written, you can add some MgCl2 x6H2O (or anihydrous)) to your stock solution for Ca. So, you would need one less dosing pump.

The thing is, doing so you can't really control Mg in case it either goes too low/high


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[NewJack]

i've always been told if you go with Bionic 2 part. they do mix Mag. into their calcium part b solution. So you can stay with just dosing the 2 parts. while in turn you will be getting the right amount of mag. solution to equal your ratio of alk and cal.

 

[downbeach]

Where do you keep your SG? I used to dose what is equivalent to ~ 385mL daily (combination kalk/Randy's recipe #1 Ca/Alk) and never had to dose any Mg. Bi monthly WC's @ a SG of 1.026, kept my Mg @ ~ 1350ppm, using Reef Crystals, ~1300 ppm using plain IO. I don't know if you can totally eliminate any abiotic precipitation. Even with my Mg at optimum levels, and my Ca and Alk at near NSW levels, I would still get a little on heaters/pumps due to the heat they produce. Where are you keeping your Ca and Alk? Higher levels may promote more precip.