Supplements

[mako417]

Was curious as to what everyone uses, recommends or warns of as far as Supplements and Filtration Media go. Do you have a regiment you follow...what products...how much...how often?

Personally, I try to keep things pretty simple...I used a 2 part (Oceans Blend) for Calcium, Magnesium, Alkalinty, PH...then Reef Complete for Trace and Selcon in Food on my old 55gal. For filtration I used Chemi-Pure in my HOB Filter and Protien Skimmer. With frequent water changes this seemed to do a pretty good job.

My new 75gal with Sump I am thinking of using Chemi-Pure Elite (now offers removal of Phosphate and Silicates) and might try Seachem's Purigen...never used it before but heard good things...any body use?

As for supplements, I might keep the same unless someone recommends something better. Anything I'm missing?

I will be doing mostly softies as far as corals...if that helps.

Any input would be appreciated!

Thanks,

mako417

 

[aquaconnect]

I don't use any supplements really, but when I first got into reefing I thought I had to use them all because that's what retailers said, but they just want your buck, just like a clothing store wants to sell you other items to go w/an outfit that you don't really need. Running just softies too will be pretty easy as they are pretty durable and don't really need a whole lot of things. I've used just about everything on the market, even Marc Weiss stuff, and just think is all hype. I've kept a very successful sps/lps tank for years now using nothing, other than the occassionly boost to my salt mix to make sure it's all in check. I run a calcium reactor and for all my traces though, and add lugol's every once in a while. I stopped feeding any phyto, but feed my fish a whole lot to supplement that because I found I have no algae blooms anymore because of that crap. I like to run my nitrates about 10ppm for my corals and my clams who benefit a great deal from that. If my reactor needs boosted on dkh I just use baking soda and for calcium I use stuff from twopartsolution.com, but with a reactor everything stays in check but over time as the load increases for growth you have to make fine tuned adjustments. I also run their twopartsolutions phosphate remover in a deltec fr509, which is the same thing as rowaphos. If you have a good fish load, I would feed varios frozen for them and the corals, like cyclops. As far as cal/dkh I would switch over to the make your own two part because it's much much cheaper and is the same thing just not premade or fancy package. If your tank is in check you shouldn't have to dose for ph. Just keep a good skimmer running, and super high water flow and everything will be happy. I don't run a refugium because in my experience it eats up too much good stuff and think the negatives of that out weigh the benefit of O2, which can be offset if you're turning your tank over high (my 180 turns almost 8000gal/hour.) Seriously though, check out www.twopartsolution.com and they have a forum under the sponcers forums it's the same stuff as bionic and rowahos. Good luck and you're more than welcome to come over anytime and see my setup.