Dosing options for a reef

[jarred1]

I am currently setting up an Sps reef and I have been doing a lot of reading about dosing options and I have come down to two possibilities.

My first option is dosing two part, I read Randy Holmes Farly's essay on dosing two part and noticed that he said when dosing with balanced two part solutions you should dose both parts in equal amounts. When I test my tank though I find that
mug tank uses more Alk than cal. I also remember reading why it happens and it still doesn't make sense to me. I also read that you should dose part A and part B a few hours after you dose one of the parts because when dosing them together they will bind with each other making both parts useless. Is that true?

The second thing I could do is top the tank of with kalkwasser. The problem I see with that is how much kalk do I need to the top off water? I don't have a sump so I will have it topped off into a high flow area, what kind of pump could I use? I used to have a air pressure system for one of my told tanks and snails used to get on to the float switch and get it stuck on causing an over dose ( thankfully nothing bad ever happened from it). If the tank isn't using the same amount of Alk and cal the perimeters will become unproportional, right?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Jarred



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[Fieroguy19]

Well there are some people who say they can get by with just kalk for a long time but most SPS tanks will use more alk than Ca. So if you want to run kalk then eventually you will have to add extra alk to keep up with demand. I still add some kalk to my top off to help with pH, but use two part as the main source for Ca and Alk. Two part should be dosed either at different times or in different locations in the tank so the the concentrated solutions do not come in contact to prevent precipitation.

 

[ThaBeast]

IME carbon dosed tanks will use more alk than calcium as well. I stopped using kalkwasser about two years ago because it was driving my balance out of whack. With two part you can keep alk and calcium balanced, regardless of use.

 

[dre_jcsutton]

Go to the 2-part. Randy's recipe works great, or just buy it from BRS.