What is your experience with magnesium?

[Philip Root]

intensity is hard for me to answer because
my light meters do not read blue light well. If I had to take a guess in a 20k I look for my lux meter to give me about 50,000-75,000 luxs. I have not been able to get high than that but zoas turn shiny, and much more colorful. Acros look amazing, if you are ever in atl, Cap. bay is pushing about 65,000 luxs if I had to guess to get the colors that they get. They burn 1000 watt MH on moves. The reason I gave a # instead of bulbs/ ballast combos, is that with my light meter I have found that many tanks with the same bulb ballast combo can very so much. I have seen one tank read as much as 25,000 lux different with the same bulb ballast combos, both bulbs were less than one year old.

 

[Tomoko Schum]

Very interesting. I suppose you are taking the reading close to the lamp or at water surface?

Tomoko

 

[Philip Root]

I have a underwater meter, So those values are underwater " at the coral value"

 

[Tomoko Schum]

Very nice.
No wonder your frags look so nice.

Tomoko

 

[kng]

Update: I have been using Seachem's Reef Advantage Magnesium for a little over a week and I test the same as I did before. I've heard it's very hard to raise mg levels once they get down. Maybe changing salts would help a little too. I guess I'll have to finish this bucket of IO I just bought.

 

[Tomoko Schum]

Yep, it takes a lot of Mgcl to raise a mere 100 ppm. It takes about 2 liter coke bottle of the Magflake solution by Randy Holmes-Farley's recipe (2 cups of Magflake in 2 liter of RODI water.) It's definitely cheaper to use Magflake or Epsom salt.

Tomoko

 

[6Speed]

I wonder if low magnesium is the problem I'm having. I noticed my sps have bleached, and my zoos are closed up. My mushrooms, leather, and frogspawn are doing fine.

 

[kng]

Not sure...I've never had any problems at all with the zoos though.

 

[Tomoko Schum]

When my magnesium became low, I saw coralline growth slowing down, but I did not see any difference in my corals. Could there be anything else going on in your tank?

Tomoko

 

[6Speed]

Well, I know I got slack with my water changes for a few months, so that is part of the problem. Would high phosphates cause sps to bleach? My digi's seem to be hit the hardest.

 

[Tomoko Schum]

Would high phosphates cause sps to bleach?

I heard that it could.

Tomoko

 

[6Speed]

I'm wondering also, assuming it is a phosphate problem, if it's partially a result of this food I bought from Pet Supplies Plus. I forgot the name, but I've been feeding it for a few months now, and it seems everything went downhill after I started using it. I used to feed only blended shrimp/selcon/squid etc.

 

[Tomoko Schum]

As you know, both frozen and dry food are known to be large sources of phosphate. So your assumption may be correct.

In an article in the latest Coral magazine (Pathogenic bacteria in the salt water aquarium Part 2), a couple of German scientists strongly recommended that we thoroughly rinsed all frozen foods immediately after thawing to reduce phosphate levels and the germ load. Surprisingly, they found pathological bacteria (vibrio) in a number of frozen foods they tested including a major American products (they did not identify the companies.) Scary, isn't it?

Tomoko