Can someone please explain what I should be doing dosing wise?

[squidisme]

Just got done with my water change and have been testing for the past week.

I am running a Nuvo 20g - I have approximately 15g of water after displacement.

• 1.025 salinity
• 79.7 degrees Fahrenheit
• 7.89 PH
• 7.9 dKH / Alkalinity
• 0 Ammonia
• 0 Nitrite
• .15 Nitrate
• .071 Phosphate - Added some phosguard to help lower it.
• 415 Calcium
• 1325 Magnesium

I use Red Sea Blue salt with RO/DI water.

Most corals are looking happy after the maintenance . My leathers (Kenya tree and finger leather) have been kind of iffy with when they open and when they close up.

I’ve been having an issue with alk and PH staying above 8.

The LFS told me to start dosing Red Sea Foundation B - my reefs dKH is dropping about .3 a day - which means 3mLs of that solution. I only dose every other day so far because I dont want to screw things up.

I also have a set of Seachem Fusion 1 and 2 - I'm not sure if this is the better option to use rather than the singular RS F-B.

PH is stable but never breaks 8. Windows are open and a skimmer is running with outside airline. Lots of surface agitation.

What should I be dosing and how often should I be doing it to keep my parameters a bit more "reef friendly" I understand that dKH is important with SPS and I want to eventually get more than the current three frags I have.

 

[Spare time]

KH is important to any stony coral (LPS and SPS), as well as anything else with calcium carbonate (or magnesium calcite). You should dose alk and calcium, and maybe magnesium and trace depending on how much they are being depleted (how long you go without water changes or how densely populated the tank is). You want to match your numbers with your salt mix. Since you use the low alk red sea salt which mixes at 35ppt with Cal 430, Mg 1280, and KH 8, you should match that. However, if you are interested in faster growth, you can slowly raise your alk and switch the the red sea coral pro salt which mixes around 12KH at 35ppt. Any alk or calcium supplement can be used, so long as you dose it into the filter intake section of your nuvo and not at the same time. Try not to raise al more than 1.4 a day. I will only raise mine by 0.5 at a given time but regularly dose the amount to keep up with my little over 1.5 KH a day drain. Calcium can be raised safely at greater amounts (I have done it by 50ppm at once if not more).

 

[Spare time]

Also you need to get your nitrates up. The phosphates are fine. Nitrates that low will result in unhappy corals and possibly dinoflagellates. Corals need nitrogen. I personally never like to keep phosphates lower than 5 as its hard to consistently maintain ultra low nitrate and not have it dip to near 0.