2 Part Dosing Different Quantities

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

still curious to know, if that’s the intent behind 2 part, why all-for-reef isn’t preferred over 2 part aside from the cost associated.

Two and three Part systems were known and established decades before an organic calcium salt like the calcium formate in All for Reef was commercially available at adequate purity and cost. Salifert used calcium acetate, but it never really caught on. TM may have a special supply of calcium formatecthat is not available to others, but they still sell their own three Part system , Balling).

There are pros and cons to each, including cost, flexibility to make independent adjustments, immediate measurement of alkalinity, convenience of one part vs two or three, ability to boost pH a lot, a little, or not at all, etc.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I guess that’s fair, never thought about it like that. The picture I took today shows my dosing in the past 24 hours of 30.6ml of alk and 16.8ml of calcium, using BRS brand two part.

If the tank is really using off 1:1, it’s ok to dose off 1:1, but the question is whether you’d even notice a difference if you were dosing 1:1 because calcium changes so slowly.

 

[ekandler]

There are two recipes of mine that BRS uses, and one is exactly half as potent as the other. So if you mixed the two recipes up somehow, that could explain your result.

So would rising nitrate that consumes alk and not calcium, or water changes with a mix that is relatively enriched in calcium relative to your tank water.

So would top off with well or tap water thst contained calcium. That is why I asked about well water.

what is your tank volume? That will help to understand the magnitude of the effect you report.

My tank is a 90 gallon volume (some unknown less amount with rock/coral/sand) it’s a reefer 350. I don’t use well water, but my city water is bad so I have a 7 stage BRS RODI. Sorry, I missed your question earlier about well water vs tap water.

Last time I bought additives I bought This for alkalinity and This for calcium.

 

[ekandler]

If the tank is really using off 1:1, it’s ok to dose off 1:1, but the question is whether you’d even notice a difference if you were dosing 1:1 because calcium changes so slowly.

Okay that’s fair. I can try just setting my calcium dose pump to mimic my alkalinity dose pump for a bit and see what that does. I guess overall do you think dosing equal additives vs what I’m doing now will make any difference in the health of my corals?

 

[thatmanMIKEson]

If the chemistry is not clear, I dont understand why anyone would complicate it with tridents and dosers they don't understand, we build buildings and structures from the ground up, the best way to do anything, start small and master your way up...no one in particular, but many in this hobby set them selves up for a hard road.

Id love to see new reefers put 2 years in of manual testing and dosing/understanding before they throw controllers and automation at a bunch of poor animals....

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

The difference between what you are dosing and exact 1:1 dosing is about 1.5 ppm calcium per day. It would take a few weeks to reproducibly detect that difference, assuming the demand was actually 1:1.

But your demand is low, and that’s the exact scenario where minor things like rising nitrate or water changes can become significant to the alk demand.

Suppose that 0.2 dKH of your full 0.5 dKH was from rising nitrate. Is that possible? Let’s see. That would take about 4 ppm of nitrate accumulated per day. Are you monitoring it?

As to a water change, a 20% change with a mix that matched the tank in alk but had 50 ppm higher calcium than the tank would also cause the difference.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I also agree that dosing pumps that do not match are frequently a cause for “unbalanced” dosing.