JohnnyHildo
Member
this might be a little long winded but in order to tell the whole story and hopefully reach a resolve heeeere we go.
so in january after my tanks 1st birthday i reviewed my tank goals. i keep zoas and sps corals and at that point was newb dosing (only dosing Ca and kH and getting Mg through water changes) and i decided to introduce a few changes and i slowly introduced a new dosing pump and aquaforrest system, their Ca,kH,Mg, reef mineral salt and then adding component strong and i switched to using their probiotic reef salt for water changes.
i test my water regularly anyway but knowing things might fluctuate decided to be even tighter by testing my Ca and kH every day which led me to run my test kits close to dry. when i replaced them the first thing i did was side by side comparisons of my old kits to the new to make sure my numbers stayed consistent and they couldn't have been further from that. the 420Ca, 8.4kH and 1150 Mg i thought i had was more like 500Ca, 12kH and 1500Mg so i got confirmation from my lfs and the elevated values were in fact the truth.
this set me off to find my tanks consumption by stopping my dose for 24 hours and measuring. initially my dose was 100mL/day of Ca+Mg, kH, and reef mineral salt and over the course of 2 months it has been reduced all the way down to 35mL/day where i still am sitting today at 460Ca, 8.8kH and 1480Mg.
my corals don't look terribly great. zoas aren't open as much and i've even lost a couple of acros along the way due to the instability associated with attempting to adjust/lower my parameters.
i'm at a loss for ideas now... do i keep risking corals by messing with my dosing amount? unplug and re-affirm my tanks needs or is there something i got bad information on and have been doing incorrectly this entire time?
also, i'm going to copy and paste this to find an answer so please excuse the duplicate if you see this on another site.
happy reefing!
so in january after my tanks 1st birthday i reviewed my tank goals. i keep zoas and sps corals and at that point was newb dosing (only dosing Ca and kH and getting Mg through water changes) and i decided to introduce a few changes and i slowly introduced a new dosing pump and aquaforrest system, their Ca,kH,Mg, reef mineral salt and then adding component strong and i switched to using their probiotic reef salt for water changes.
i test my water regularly anyway but knowing things might fluctuate decided to be even tighter by testing my Ca and kH every day which led me to run my test kits close to dry. when i replaced them the first thing i did was side by side comparisons of my old kits to the new to make sure my numbers stayed consistent and they couldn't have been further from that. the 420Ca, 8.4kH and 1150 Mg i thought i had was more like 500Ca, 12kH and 1500Mg so i got confirmation from my lfs and the elevated values were in fact the truth.
this set me off to find my tanks consumption by stopping my dose for 24 hours and measuring. initially my dose was 100mL/day of Ca+Mg, kH, and reef mineral salt and over the course of 2 months it has been reduced all the way down to 35mL/day where i still am sitting today at 460Ca, 8.8kH and 1480Mg.
my corals don't look terribly great. zoas aren't open as much and i've even lost a couple of acros along the way due to the instability associated with attempting to adjust/lower my parameters.
i'm at a loss for ideas now... do i keep risking corals by messing with my dosing amount? unplug and re-affirm my tanks needs or is there something i got bad information on and have been doing incorrectly this entire time?
also, i'm going to copy and paste this to find an answer so please excuse the duplicate if you see this on another site.
happy reefing!
