What additives if any?

J

jet_jer

Premium Member
I am getting ready to switch my top off from a peristalic dosing pump to a Tunze Osmolator unit and was wondering what most people use for additives. A the moment I am adding nothing to the tank and everything seems to be doing fine - I am starting to get purple in the tank and it seems to be progressing along. My water is RO/DI and I have no sps but a mixture of hammer, xenia, kenya, 3 different zoo's, 3 typs of shrooms, and a ricodia. All of them seem to be doing ok, the ric is loving it, the zoo's seem to look ok - not as bright as I only hace 384W od CP on a 75 Gal but they are not spreading much at all. The shrooms open and close and get real big during the day - but again are not spreading. Kenya trees are groing big, xenia even though I was told grows like a weed - not much growth in my tank.


After all that - I would like to know what additives I might look into to help if any :). Water quality right :) - Ammonia, Nitrite, and Nitrate are zero - Nitrate might jump to .25 every now and then. Calcium was 330 last time I checked and my PH is around 8.45 in the day and 8.1 at night.

Any suggestions would be great - I'm having a lot of fun wiht this.

Jer
 
Yikes, thats a low calcium level which is prolly why you're not seeing all that much growth. I'd also wonder what your alkalinity measurement is like? Its PROBABLY low, but no guarantees there. I'm no expert on dosing but you're prolly gonna want to consider a two-part additive like B-ionic if you're afraid of DIY and chemistry. If you like DIY and chemistry there are lots of options for increasing your alk and calc.

I'm not the expert on dosing since my low coral amount doesn't yet require it, but you want your calc around 4-500ppm and your alk around 9-12 dKH (dunno what the equivalent in meq/L is).
 
I believe my ALK was 9.? last time I checked - I'll run these test again tonight and post so that the help can be a little more useful :)

jer
 
OK - here are the number as they stand right now:

Ammonia - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - .25
Calcium - 315
Phosphate - .01
Alk - 9.7
pH - 8.35

I'll start looking into the calcium & alk additives and how to dose them. Let me know if the numbers above changed anything, but I don't think they did - probably confimed it instead :)

jer
 
They do and they dont. Your alk isnt all that low which is prolly why your pH is still good. I'd first try gettin that calc up to around 400 by slowly dosing for it. For complicated chemistry reasons which even I dont understand, somtimes dosing one can cause a crash in the other if you go too quick. So just dose slowly and bring them up together :)
 
WIll do - I just read an article by Randy about calc & alk dosing and I figured out that I should start dosing calc until its in the right area and then keep tabs of it and dose a calc/alk combo later after I have them balanced.

What supplement for Calcium do most use?

Jer
 
I've found Kalkwasser to work for me. It's a tad simple, but then again, that works for me. So long as you add it slowly, it's pretty hard to screw up.

- Mac
 
If your looking to empty your wallet for a great long term solution, a calcium reactor plus SLOW drip of kalwasser as makeup water.

A calcium reactor uses CO2 to make a chamber of water more acidic to disolve aragonite which adds to calcium and carbonate as well as other trace elements. If you have plenty of aeration when the water leaves the reactor the CO2 escapes and your PH may actually go up slightly. Not enough air exchange and you could lower you tank PH but that is usually easilly fixed.

Kalkwasser is a VERY strong base (alkaline) and it needs to be dosed very slowly. If done right it adds calcium and through reactions I believew also can help raise your alk. If you dose too fast it will raise the PH in your tank (or even just a local area in the sump maybe) too high and calcium and other things will fall out of suspension and form deposits. You have to be real careful of this because you can use kalkwasser to lower your calcuim levels a lot faster then to raise them so if you have a crash it could take a long time to recover.

IMHO a combination of the 2 will give the best results with the least side effects but it will cost more upfront and take more setup then the other popular option.

Option B is a two part system like Bionic where you add two different liquids that work together to raise calcium and alk. The down side is extra daily work, and a higher continuing expense to keep buying the liquids. I am also not too sure about the other chemicals that end up in your tank, possibly leaving some ions out of balence ( can't remember the specifics). On the plus side it is harder to screw up and way cheaper to get a couple bottles and try out. I used Bionic for a couple of months and it worked great but also convinced me to invest in the calcium reactor.
 
Eventually I'll definatly invest in a kalkwasser reactor as I can see that being a need. The calcium reactor I will wait for until we decide to put on the addition or move as I have no more room where my tank is now and when we move/add-on I'll be able to have more room and create a sump room in the basement :). So for now I'll add calcium supplement (dowflake) and get the calcium and alk in balance then dose a 2 part solution and get the kalkwasser going.

jer
 
Yikes! If your thinking of moving or even relocating the tank you know the tank relocations rules right? The only way to move a reef system is to buy a new tank for the destination that is AT LEAST double the size of your current tank. Then after the critters move you can not sell the 75, you need to set it up as a mega fuge, frag tank or perhaps a lagoon tank. At least thats what I tell my wife :D
 
Well Heck yeah!!! I figure I have to get a 150 and then use the 75 as the sump with the 30 as the fuge :)

Jer
 
Jer:

As for dosing all you really need to dose is the Kalk and do frequent small water changes. For now bring the Calcium up to between 390-420. Do not bring it up to 500! That will crash your system quick. Calcium and Alk are always in balance as you bring the Cal up the Alk will drop. It is ok for the Alk to drop a little as long as you don’t bring the calcium up to 500 causing the Alk to drop so low the tank crashes. Keep the Alk at around 8 DKH. Once you get the Cal and around those ranges all you should have to do is dose the kalk and it will stay more or less balanced from there on out. Both values may go up but they will go up together. You shouldn’t need to use too much 2 part if any because you are using the kalk and your system not having many SPS probably won’t demand it. Good luck...

Nate
 
Jer, Neilsen style Kalkwasser Reactors can be made for around 10-bucks, so long as you don't ask it to be a display item on your tank. The dosing pump is the only expensive part.

- Mac
 
You can skip the frequent small water changes. Frequent siphoning is good if you have detritus to remove, but simply changing a small amount of water in hopes of maintaining chemical levels or removing bad chemicals is a mathematical impossibility.

Say you change 20% a week and your salt mix has a calcium level of 450, and your tank is currently at 300. If your tank doesn't consume any calcium at all, it would take 5 weeks to break 400 and 13 weeks to get to 440. You could never get to 450.

If your tank uses 1% if the calcium in a week, even after 5 years you couldn't get over 95% (427.5) with just water changes. If your tank uses 2% in a week you would max out at 405, 3% would be 382.5. The more your tank uses the lower the maximum attainable levels will be.

In summary if your tank uses up something you need to dose it, if it creates something (like nitrates) you need to find a way to get it out. Water changes will do neither very well.
 
Obviously m-fine Jer is going to have to use something to get his calcium up. I was not suggesting that water changes would bring his calcium levels up but that doing water changes will replace the trace elements being used by his tank and those should be all he needs to dose. Jer knows that water changes won’t bring his calcium levels up and I believe he had stated that he plans on using dowflake to do that just three posts before mine.

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7513787#post7513787 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by m-fine
You can skip the frequent small water changes.
Click to expand...

You can skip the frequent small water changes? m-fine are you serious? That is terrible advice.



<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7513787#post7513787 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by m-fine
In summary if your tank uses up something you need to dose it, if it creates something (like nitrates) you need to find a way to get it out. Water changes will do neither very well.
Click to expand...

Doing water changes is one of the best forms of exporting nutrients and importing trace elements known. Good luck with growing algae and cyanobacteria. Sounds like you’re on the right path…

Nate
 
Changing 20% of the water will not export or replace ANYTHING to desired levels. You can use relatively simple math to prove this either way. Telling people it will is the horrible advice that has been indoctrinated into new reefers for decades. It probably comes from the need to siphon crap off the bottom and the futile battle to keep nitrates down in the old "Berlin" systems with a wet dry. I used to have one of those tanks and we did as much as 90% water changes and still had higher nitrate levels then everyone has today with LR and DSB's.

As I said before ANYTHING that is consumed or created can not be replaced or removed by small water changes alone no matter how frequently you do them. All you can do is slow the depletion or accumulation, but eventually you will get to the same dead end.

Nutrients need to be exported through a skimmer or by removing macro algae from a fuge etc. and through siphoning detritus. Trace elements need to be dosed some how, such as additives or a calcium reactor. The only exception to this is if your salt mix contains higher amounts then your target levels. These are hard mathematical/scientific facts, not just my opinions or theories.

In short, if your siphoning junk out of your tank, you are doing something good. If you just drain a portion of the water and replace it you aren't accomplishing much unless the percentage of water changed is very large (>75%).
 
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