I've used B-Ionic for a long time, as Sara stated. I dose every day and don't test for alk and Ca because the levels never change. I switched to BRS two part because it was infinitely cheaper. I worked at it for many months and simply couldn't get my parameters stable. I found myself adding two and three times more chemicals than I ever did with B-Ionic. Then corals started to die. I couldn't figure it out and was getting frustrated.
It was Sara who suggested I go back to B-Ionic because it was only after I switched to BRS that I started having trouble. I switched back to B-Ionic and, within a month, my parameters were stable and the corals recovered and started growing again.
Sara's use of the BRS stuff was supposed to be temporary until she got a new reactor system set up. Use of the BRS stuff went on for much longer than planned. Switching to B-Ionic was part of the overall plan to fix her system problems. I'm convinced it has stabilized the water and, coupled with raising the husbandry bar, has played a role in turning her system around.
The key component, as she stated, was getting the deep sandbed out of the refugium and generally eliminating that container as a collecting point for organics. As she gets the substrate out of the frag tank, things will only improve more. You have to see for yourself how concrete hard that frag tank substrate is and the junk that had collected in it.
Gary
