Should I dose?

[kevin21]

Tank has been running for 5 months now. Have a six line wrasse, frogspawn, hammer, torch, brain, candy cane, emerald crab and snails.

Right now tank has some brown diatoms. Not awful, but typical new tank stuff. I do monthly 20% water changes on this 28g JBJ nano. I have a tunze 9002 skimmer as well. Lighting is kessil a150w sky blue.

I am wondering if I should be dosing anything daily, weekly, etc? I know my LPS are going to eat up the trace elements and calcium pretty good. I use instant ocean salt, and I am going to be switching to instant ocean reef crystals as soon as this bucket is empty.

Should I be dosing to supplement kalk? Calcium?

As of now my parameters are on par and have been steady. But I know this does not last. Unless My water changes of 20% monthly will keep these in check.

Thanks!

 

[skp]

Every tank is different with the amount of uptake. And every tank will change with time/growth. You will need to test to know if you need to dose or if your water changes will keep up.

 

[gone fishin]

I agree with the above. Keep an eye on your alkalinty, calcium and magnesium. If at some point your WC's are not holding the setpoint you want then you will need to think about dosing. In the meantime you can read up on it. There is a relationship between those three. There are some articles in the setting up sticky at the top of the forum.

 

[AcroNewbie]

Test is before adding anything to the tank. Once you work out how much your corals consume a week you can consider whether to dose or do small incremental water changes with a salt that has higher contents (Alk, CA, Mg). Your corals shouldn't consume much so I think water changes with maybe reef crystals or something with higher content is more than enough should you ever need it. But first is test!

 

[dowjones1221]

as mentioned above the only time you need to dose is when your corals are depleting the natural elements from the salt mix....testing is the only way to truly know if this is happening....t typically doesn't happen unless you have a heavily stocked lips/sps tank or you rarely do water changes.....no need to add another expense or daily/weekly maintenance if not needed!

P.S. would love to see some pics of your tank if you can upload some!!