Dosing help alk and calc equal?

[Canadianbeardedreefer]

hey guys!

Figured I would make my own post as I can’t find the exact answer. My current parameters are:

Mag:1480
Calc:460
Alk:7.0

I have to dose alk almost everyday because it drops much faster and rarely have to dose calc and mag. After doing some reading people say to dose in equal parts, this confuses me. Am I doing something wrong?

My alk drops much faster than my calcium. Please help as I have a ton of corals in my tank, and would hate to create an imbalance. Just want to be sure I’m doing this correct.

I am using the Red Sea Foundations for dosing and use about 10-15mls of alk per day. But calc hovers around the same range always.

My alk drops roughly 1dkh per day or so.

 

[Saintnovakai]

First question is easy. What do you use to test calcium? Try to get a second opinion test wise.

Also 1DKH a day begs me to ask what's in your tank, just to rule out precipitation.

Also calcium is used equally to Alk, but test kits register changes disproportionately. Alk will show a huge change on a test kit vs Calcium but make no mistake, corals use them in equal proportions.

 

[Canadianbeardedreefer]

Hey there! I use Red Sea for all my tests. Though I used aquaforest prior, I double check alk

with Salifert. It is fairly stocked in my eyes. I still have some aquaforest calcium tests left I’ll double check it tonight.

 

[rsumner]

Keep in mind that "dosing equal parts" may not mean dosing the same volume of fluid of your particular brand of supplement. For instance, I use Seachem Reef Complete for my calcium supplement and Seachem Reef Carbonate for my alkalinity supplement.

Uptake can be different depending on what else you have in your tank other than just corals, but I think the typical ratio that I've seen before is around 18-20ppm calcium for every 2.8dKH, but I've seen others (like BRS) that use a 7ppm calcium to 1dKH calculation.