Adding corals and dosing.

[Notsolostfish]

Right now i have couple of zoas, 1 hammer, 1 candy cane, 2 duncan. And 1 mushroom. Tmw im getting torch, 6 heads of 3 frogspawn and 3 hammers. 1 more teal hammer and im getting more zoas. When should i start dosing calcium and alk? I need to prepare myself?

 

[exnisstech]

Do you test? That will tell you that you need to start dosing when levels are dropping. Many people keep up doing water changes. Some use kalk, others the different supplements available. Too many to list. I use kalk in one tank and kalk plus 2 part in another. Each tank is different and depends on how much is being consumed. Some people never dose.

 

[matt_work27]

How large is your system? In order to see if you need to dose alk and calc you need to see how many dkh your alk is dropping in a week. You dont really want a swing of more than 1.5 of alk a week. I would suspect water changes once a week would be enough to keep alk and calc at acceptable levels.

 

[bushdoc]

Test your dKH regularly and you will see when it drops, then its time to start dosing.
I would get supplies now. Initially you can probably dose manually.

 

[Notsolostfish]

How large is your system? In order to see if you need to dose alk and calc you need to see how many dkh your alk is dropping in a week. You dont really want a swing of more than 1.5 of alk a week. I would suspect water changes once a week would be enough to keep alk and calc at acceptable levels.

My tank is 54 gallons 36 display with 18 gallon sump and 45 gallons water volume.

My dkh is 7.4 currently stable as i use tropic marin salt

 

[matt_work27]

My tank is 54 gallons 36 display with 18 gallon sump and 45 gallons water volume.

My dkh is 7.4 currently stable as i use tropic marin salt

Lower than you would want, usually 8-9 is a good range. However, if you arent keeping sps or acropora it isn't a huge deal imo. But if you did want to raise it by 1 dkh over the course of a week you could do so using the akalinity part of a two part supplement (esv b ionic, bulk reef supply two part, sea chem two part, ect). Im not sure what day you do water changes on but I would test right after a water change one week and right before the next (so about 7 days in between the test where you haven't added any alk) and see what it is then. If the drop in alk is no greater than 1 dkh I would not worry about dosing

 

[Notsolostfish]

Lower than you would want, usually 8-9 is a good range. However, if you arent keeping sps or acropora it isn't a huge deal imo. But if you did want to raise it by 1 dkh over the course of a week you could do so using the akalinity part of a two part supplement (esv b ionic, bulk reef supply two part, sea chem two part, ect). Im not sure what day you do water changes on but I would test right after a water change one week and right before the next (so about 7 days in between the test where you haven't added any alk) and see what it is then. If the drop in alk is no greater than 1 dkh I would not worry about dosing

Tropic marin pro mixes at 7.5 i checked my mix before. And even on their bucket it says low 7s. I have the red sea (alk only) i can keep it betwen 7.4-7.8 if i have to.

 

[matt_work27]

In the end, stability is the most important thing so as long as you keep it in that range you will be fine with keeping lps. GL and happy reefing

 

[TokenReefer]

Test your dKH regularly and you will see when it drops, then its time to start dosing.
I would get supplies now. Initially you can probably dose manually.

^^