New to all of this and am learning lingo in the communities. So stupid question; are you doing a two part dose of like fusion 1 and 2 or a liquid of the like? Are you using a reactor to dose your alk/cal as well? You also said you dose trace elements as part of a calcium solution; what solution by chance? Is this in conjunction with your two part alk/cal? Sorry so many questions
In the reefing world the only dumb question is the question not asked. Our critters depend on us and our knowledge. So, happy that you ask away. I had similar questions when I started! I have a heavily populated (finally) mixed reef of Acropora, montipora, duncans, acans, xenia, massive 12-15" Toad Stool, orange kryptonite encrusting stuff, GSP, and several varieties of hammers, a green fungia plate coral. So much to name, but they're all doing great! Plus a variety of anemones.
I try to find cheap ways to maintain my reef. I had a Bubble magus 3 pump doser from a previous tank I sold, so I replaced all the pump heads on that and reused it for this tank. So, I have 3 separate dosing containers.
For alkalinity: I buy the 10 or 12 pound bag of baking soda from Costco. Costs me like $9.00 and last my 340 gallon tank anywhere from 6 months to a year. I follow Randy Holmes Farley recipe on two part. I bake the baking soda in an oven at 350 for 1-3 hours (this turns it into soda ash). When dosed the baked baking soda has a tendency to raise PH. Which, I'll take whatever I can!
1. Alk - I mix 3/4 cup baked baking soda with 1.5 Liter of RODI water. 3 years ago I started with 10 ml a day. I'm up to 240 ml a day (or 10 ml an hour). This maintains my alk at around 8 DKH. My consumption has been creeping up because 240 ml a day used to keep it at 9-10 dkh. So, I'll need to increase dosing here soon.
2. Calcium Chloride: Per the recipe I buy CACL from BRS (just easier than trying to find alternate solutions) and I mix this at the same ratio as my alk 3/4 cup to 1.5 liter of RODI and I dose at the same amount 240 ml per day. (my understanding is to maintain balance alk and CA should be dosed in the same amounts even if CA is good)
3. I added in Magnesium Chloride and Magnesium Sulfate (BRS Components) and mixing at the BRS suggested ratio for 3 part. I dose this at a much lower dose because I've never seen my Magnesium go down. So, I'm dosing at 48 ml a day just to add some sulfates into my tank. Which, I'm told is good to have. I don't have any proof of how or why. This part I added in the last 6-8 months. for the last 2+ years I didn't dose magnesium. And if doing water changes I'm not sure how necessary this really is. My advise is don't worry about magnesium until you have tons of coral and even then, if you're doing regular water changes, don't worry about this at all..
4. Trace elements: Again I'm not sure these are necessary if doing water changes. I stopped doing water changes 4 months ago and have not noticed any negative effects. If anything my corals are growing more. Lol. But I've invested a lot of money and time into filtration with Algae turf scrubber, large skimmer, filter socks, even have a Nu-clear cannister filter. So many things to keep clean. But, no water changes!
So, trace elements I use Red Sea Trace elements A, B, C, D at a 10:1 ratio. So, for 340-350 gallons of salt water around 30-35 ml per
week. That's all I do. These I manually dose on Wednesdays / Thursday. I buy the 500 ml bottles and they last me almost 2 months.
I'd recommend an ICP test once in a while to verify your salt water chemistry. I had so much issues with corals receding or dying around a year ago and couldn't figure out why. I discovered that I had no trace elements - 0. And my phosphates were .66 ppm. The phosphates were killing my corals. I took steps to reduce them with massive more frequent water changes, upping the lighting duration on my algae scrubber, and dosing phosphate-e until the phosphates were down. I also switched from basic IO to reef crystals and did larger water changes to switch out the base salt water. Then started dosing trace elements.
Now, I test nitrates and Phosphates weekly with Hanna testers: My phosphates generally are between .04 and .08ppm now and nitrates around 11-19. I have around 26-27 fish. Some of them quite large.
Last, but not least, I also vodka dose to keep my nitrates and phosphates down. I'm dosing around 10 ml a day of vodka to feed bacteria. I get the cheapest vodka I can find. And have it on a BRS doser on my Apex.
It's a lot of information, just take what matters to you. My methods are old school with baking soda and so on. But, they are tried and true.
I’m changing out about 5 gallons of water per week. Using RODI water to mix.
