Feeding and Dosing

[KaliReeFiend]

Getting ready to purchase my first corals and right now I’m interested in LPS and Soft. I was curious do you need to dose and keep Calcium, Mag, Phos, and Alk up like you would an LPS tank? And as far as feeding I’m assuming something like Reef Roids would be my go to for these guys correct? Im brand new to this so bare with me and thank you for your help.

 

[melanotaenia]

If you are not going heavy with SPS and sensitive corals your levels should stay consistent with regular water changes and perhaps dosing Kalkwasser into your auto top off.
For feeding it would depend on the corals, but Reef Roids does well as a general food for many LPS types.

 

[KaliReeFiend]

Ok awesome thank you for the reply. I’ll look into that Kalkwasser and maybe grab some of that. Pick up some coral and see how it goes haha. Also possibly going to pick up a couple clowns this week. Do you have any recommendation on bio load when adding corals? Should I add few frags first wait a couple weeks then add the fish? Not sure how much waste these corals produce.

 

[Mcdy]

I think the norm is to add once a week or longer. We have been pretty successful with this theory in my tank. I know one day we bought home three tangs and waited a week and added some coral. I really try to match the LFS with their water parameters and temperature so there is not a big shock after acclimating. There are some bad LFS's out there but the one I deal with is very stringent on when and how we add fish/coral to our tank. As reefers, we get excited and want to add quickly, but they keep that in check and will not sell if too early. They even came out to verify that our tank had cycled and parameters were correct.

Your tank will do it's own thing. Testing the bigs like Calcium, Alkalinity, magnesium, PH, Salinity, Nitrate and nitrites will keep you out of a lot of trouble. I use the RedSea kit to test kit and check once daily on the three bigs. I also have an Apex that keeps track of a lot like temp, PH, water level, and so on. Let me add Ammonia also.

I do add RedSea A and B to our tank nightly so the corals have food and such and in the morning I feed the fish. Good luck!

 

[KaliReeFiend]

I think the norm is to add once a week or longer. We have been pretty successful with this theory in my tank. I know one day we bought home three tangs and waited a week and added some coral. I really try to match the LFS with their water parameters and temperature so there is not a big shock after acclimating. There are some bad LFS's out there but the one I deal with is very stringent on when and how we add fish/coral to our tank. As reefers, we get excited and want to add quickly, but they keep that in check and will not sell if too early. They even came out to verify that our tank had cycled and parameters were correct.

Your tank will do it's own thing. Testing the bigs like Calcium, Alkalinity, magnesium, PH, Salinity, Nitrate and nitrites will keep you out of a lot of trouble. I use the RedSea kit to test kit and check once daily on the three bigs. I also have an Apex that keeps track of a lot like temp, PH, water level, and so on. Let me add Ammonia also.

I do add RedSea A and B to our tank nightly so the corals have food and such and in the morning I feed the fish. Good luck!

Yea I was thinking of picking up the Red Sea kit. I only have the basic saltwater API kit for my fowlr so will get the reef kit for this tank. My LFS uses and sell real sea water so its I use the same water they use however I will be buying coral elsewhere as they are more of a fish stocking store than coral. They carry some but not like WWC or some other places so chances are my water wont match theres anyway. I think I’m going to take advantage of their sale and grab a few frags for this coming week and then add the clowns the following week to be safe. Thank you for your input and advice.