If you use the basic coral salt mix (reef salt), your new tank if properly lighted will have a 'nice' period in which corals extend and look happy. If they're stony, still true. Doing your 10% water change weekly will help maintain that happy period.
But as your tank ages, and as stony corals get hungrier, they will start sucking the calcium out of your salt mix hand over fist. In my 52 stony reef, with only 4 corals, I found I was dosing a lot of calcium daily just to keep up with it...as in...multiple spoonfuls.
This is where you HAVE to start feeding it something cheaper than 18.00 a jar. What you need is kalk, so long as kalk can keep up with it. In a reef under 75 gallons, even up to 100 gallons, you can probably do nicely with that.
If you will pre-set (by dosing with supplements) your numbers where mine are (8.3 alkalinity, 420 calcium, 1350 magnesium) and put 2 tsp kalk powder into your topoff reservoir---that's 2 tsp per gallon of ro/di, natural evaporation and topping off will feed your corals nicely: the mg doesn't deplete fast at all, and the kalk is both maintaining your alkalinity and supplying calcium. Instead of 18.00 a jar for calcium powder, you can spend 5.00 for a pound or so of Mrs. Wages Pickling Lime, or whatever 'kalk' you can find. Life will be a lot easier, and those numbers will never fall until the mg sinks below 1200. Keep your nitrate at about 5, your alk/cal/mg where I state above, your lighting adequate, and really just watching the mg (magnesium) in weekly tests will tell you that that chemistry is still locked. If you keep adding more ro/di and kalk and mg, you can parlay that into months of stability.
Easy? Here's how easy. It's real hard to overdose kalk. ONLY 2 tsp per gallon can dissolve in ro/di under normal ph, so just don't panic if you get a white residue on the bottom---it's just undissolved kalk, which WILL dissolved when you add more water. I have a big reservoir and normally just drop a pound in. If you do white-out your tank in a topoff accident, worry more about the salinity because of the fresh water flood than you do about the white powder, which will gradually dissolve and get used. Take a turkey baster to puff it off your corals, and don't panic. If your ph spikes way up, one teaspoon of Schweppe's Bar Soda per 50 gallons of system water will bring it down fast: it sinks pretty fast on its own, so don't overdose the bar soda. Mostly, it's self-correcting.
I don't have a controller. I don't hate them, just never got one. I use Salifert tests, Kent supplements. Using this system I can go off on the road for a month and come back to a happy, well-fed reef.
But as your tank ages, and as stony corals get hungrier, they will start sucking the calcium out of your salt mix hand over fist. In my 52 stony reef, with only 4 corals, I found I was dosing a lot of calcium daily just to keep up with it...as in...multiple spoonfuls.
This is where you HAVE to start feeding it something cheaper than 18.00 a jar. What you need is kalk, so long as kalk can keep up with it. In a reef under 75 gallons, even up to 100 gallons, you can probably do nicely with that.
If you will pre-set (by dosing with supplements) your numbers where mine are (8.3 alkalinity, 420 calcium, 1350 magnesium) and put 2 tsp kalk powder into your topoff reservoir---that's 2 tsp per gallon of ro/di, natural evaporation and topping off will feed your corals nicely: the mg doesn't deplete fast at all, and the kalk is both maintaining your alkalinity and supplying calcium. Instead of 18.00 a jar for calcium powder, you can spend 5.00 for a pound or so of Mrs. Wages Pickling Lime, or whatever 'kalk' you can find. Life will be a lot easier, and those numbers will never fall until the mg sinks below 1200. Keep your nitrate at about 5, your alk/cal/mg where I state above, your lighting adequate, and really just watching the mg (magnesium) in weekly tests will tell you that that chemistry is still locked. If you keep adding more ro/di and kalk and mg, you can parlay that into months of stability.
Easy? Here's how easy. It's real hard to overdose kalk. ONLY 2 tsp per gallon can dissolve in ro/di under normal ph, so just don't panic if you get a white residue on the bottom---it's just undissolved kalk, which WILL dissolved when you add more water. I have a big reservoir and normally just drop a pound in. If you do white-out your tank in a topoff accident, worry more about the salinity because of the fresh water flood than you do about the white powder, which will gradually dissolve and get used. Take a turkey baster to puff it off your corals, and don't panic. If your ph spikes way up, one teaspoon of Schweppe's Bar Soda per 50 gallons of system water will bring it down fast: it sinks pretty fast on its own, so don't overdose the bar soda. Mostly, it's self-correcting.
I don't have a controller. I don't hate them, just never got one. I use Salifert tests, Kent supplements. Using this system I can go off on the road for a month and come back to a happy, well-fed reef.
