Supplements
- Thread starter hzhl1011
- Start date
Mineral/element suppliments: Test your water weekly for calcium, alkalinity, hardness, magnesium and add what is being used/what your tank is deficient in. Trace elements may not be needed if you do water changes regularly and frequently enough with a good quality salt for corals.
Food suppliments, I'll leave to more experienced folks to answer.
You can do some with automatic dosers. All can be done by adding to the tank by hand in measurements/time periods indicated on the product.
Food suppliments, I'll leave to more experienced folks to answer.
You can do some with automatic dosers. All can be done by adding to the tank by hand in measurements/time periods indicated on the product.
A1t2o
New member
Get Alkalinity, Calcium, and Magnesium test kits. Only dose what you are testing for. Directions are on the chemicals, but do not use the bottles of Kent or similar. You want the BRS or B-Ionic stuff. Those are in bulk and you go though a lot, so stick to the bulk quantities. B-Ionic is better than BRS. They say the BRS is pharmaceutical grade, but there is no way that's true, its got crap in there that might grow algae.
Dkuhlmann
New member
IMO you don't have enough corals to warrant adding anything as long as you're doing wc's at least every two weeks. I've got quite a few LPS a couple of SPS and a few leathers (they don't use much of anything) and still don't have to dose but I'm sure with my new additions I'll be having to soon. I literally have 10x the corals that you do and Instant Ocean Reef Crystals are all I need with doing a 20% wc every two weeks. IO RC is very reasonable you can find it on Ebay and Amazon for around $45-$50 for a 160-200 gal box just do a little searching. Also watch Petco and Pet Smart sales, I bought the bucket of IO RC for $35 not that long ago.
Yes BRS is about the cheapest that you can buy for your dosing needs but Kent has great products and I use several of them and Highly recommend Kent products.
Actually you can get Cal, Kalk and Mag much cheaper than BRS if you search around. But they do make it easy and reasonably affordable not to have to do the searching.
So get the test kits Cal/Mag/Alk and see if you need to dose. I agree 100% don't does anything you don't have a test for.
Yes BRS is about the cheapest that you can buy for your dosing needs but Kent has great products and I use several of them and Highly recommend Kent products.
Actually you can get Cal, Kalk and Mag much cheaper than BRS if you search around. But they do make it easy and reasonably affordable not to have to do the searching.
So get the test kits Cal/Mag/Alk and see if you need to dose. I agree 100% don't does anything you don't have a test for.
gone fishin
New member
No they are not. First you need to get some tests for Alkalinity, calcium and magnesium. I prefer salifert test, for me they are easy to read and repeatable. Once you get the tests I would wait until you do a WC then test, this will give you a base line. I would wait 3 or 4 days and test again and repeat until you do another WC then test again. If the values do not change or the WC brings them back then IMO you do not need to dose anything. If they do change or the WC does not bring the values back then you need to consider some sort of dosing and that would be another discussion based on your values.
As far as food supplements With what you have listed I do not think you need any. Good luck just my 2 cents.
Sapelo
New member
Just for the record, you shouldn't just decide not to add any supplements, if you're going to have corals you need to be testing alkalinity, calcium and magnesium and maintaining those levels at a VERY consistent rate. Coral consume these portions of your water in order to grow. Your tank may or may not support them without dosing additions. The only way to be certain of this is to test and retest and then retest again. Testing and maintaining are part of the deal with wanting to keep coral. Good luck!
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