school me on dosing

[2t2_crash]

alright fellahs, all I do for my tank is:

10g weekly swapout with water from ACO
run a skimmer constant
have a metric ton of Cheato in the sump.


what do I need to do to get this baby in better shape?


I am having a helluva time getting my flow setup correct, seems whichever way I try to adjust there are dead spots below or above and the detrius wants to float around the tank and not towards the overflow.


my cleanup crew is a dozen small snails, a camel back shrimp and a sea cucumber. I have two medium clams and four or five small ones, plus Zoas, leathers and a finger coral.

 

[james37128]

For clams you will want to maintain calcium alk and mag. So first step will be ordering kits for each of those Salifert is good for calcium, api is good for alk, and elos is good for mag. Kent's 2 part works well for calcium and alk and their tech M works well for Mag.

As far as your flow, the point where detritus is floating around all over the tank but not sand is perfect. You want the detritus to float around in the tank until the overflow catches it, even if that means a week of floating around. Once it clears up the after the first few days, it should pretty much stay clear after that. What is your flow rate to and from your sump? Maybe you should beef that up if it's low, but be careful if your overflow is rated at 600gph you will have a flood if you throw a pump on that does 1200gph.

 

[2t2_crash]

I have to throttle down the return because it out pumps the overflow.

my koralias can create a sandstorm if I am not careful.

how much $$ are we lookin equipment wise? I gotta know how much to butter up the wife.. I'm trying to up the butdget for my computer parts upgrade too.. LMAO.

 

[Lionel]

ive got an extra overflow that might be bigger than yours if you want to take a look

 

[bethnjeremy]

you need to at least dose Ca, Alk, and Mg. Those are the primary for coral growth. Also goes the same for clams. What you dose a good rule of thumb is to have a test kit to make sure you are not overdosing or under. Anyways to the next thing your flow in your tank. you are just going to have to play with it. You could always have the koralias lower on the tank and and bouncing off a wall aiming up to get more gas exchange. Also you could just add more live rock so you don't have as much open sand areas. I use to have issues with sandstorms, but since having a BB tank now I have increased the flow alot more for better nutrient exportation. Also I would suggest maybe carbon dosing. i have a couple extra vials of bacteria if you want to buy one to try it out. Bacteria dosing helps alot IME. increasing your flow to the sump IMO is not important. I have my 150 with a mag18 throttled back with my chiller inline. I would say I only get 500-700 gph to the tank from the sump. I have 14,700 gph x98 turnover in my tank. I also have filtersocks to catch the large chunks in my sump. After that I have my two skimmers to get the rest. I run a bare sump as well. It makes it easy to suck the rest of the detritus that has settled through the week. To summarize, start a dosing regimen. Set up a good filtration, a must is a good skimmer bigger is always better in this case. Possibly look at a carbon dosing regimen.

 

[bethnjeremy]

hey i still have the uv sterilizer and denitrator. I am just looking to get rid of it. I have way too much fish stuff. lol. Anyways let me know we can working a price out.