Manual dosing is adequate along with water changes as needs arise. As your coral load/numbers increase , you may need to go with auto dosing but test kits will determine this need. Supplemental Dosing a reef aquarium is the process of adding trace elements like Calcium, Alkalinity, and Magnesium to the water. As corals grow their consumption increases, once water changes cannot meet this demand, dosing is required. Water changes work really well for most aquarists that do not have a lot of coral or have an aquarium mainly consisting of soft corals like Mushrooms, zoa & Palys, Kenya Trees, Pulsing Xenia, and GSP, to name a few.
These corals will still consume the elements, but because they are not building a hard skeleton they do not use anywhere near as much as LPS and SPS do.
There are a few ways in which to dose Cal, Alk, and Mag to your aquarium:
- Water change
- Manually Adding
- Automatically Adding Via Dosing Pumps
- Calcium Reactor
When dosing Calcium and Alkalinity you need to dose them at separate times. Dosing them together would cause ‘Precipitation’ and this looks like a white cloud in your aquarium.
In layman’s terms, Precipitation is the Calcium undissolving from the water. Once it precipitates your corals are unable to absorb the Calcium.
