FINDING OUT HOW MUCH PER DAY TO DOSE.

[c.poindexter]

When you use the calculator on BRS it says that you could potentially raise it 1.4 a day. Personally I think that's a bit dangerous and would work on raising it over a week to your desired range. A lot of reefers run 8-8.5ish with some definitely running higher. You also have to be sure to add it to a high flow are or you will get build up. I use the BRS calculator to get a rough estimate on mL and then test daily and continue to adjust from there.

 

[tjiddy]

Once you have it dialed in and are dosing daily, how do you account for water changes? Unless you are dosing the tank so parameters match your salt mix, won't a water change throw it off? Is the best course of action to figure out the difference between tank params and salt params, then use the BRS calculator using the changed volume to figure out a one time dose?

 

[patsheridan]

I have a 75G with a 15G sump, mixed reef, softies and LPS and fishes. The best thing I have done in the past year was to get two paristoltic pumps from BRS. Manual dosing is not the way to go.

My Alk usage is generally greater than my Calcium usage, but it all depends on your mix of livestock, I am sure. With the basic pumps from BRS there is no adjusting the amount dosed by the pump; it is either on or off. So you would get two timers (one for each pump) and set them to go on as needed. As a good guide for you (since our tanks are similar size - again, depending on your livestock load) I have my Alk pump go on twice a day for about two to three minutes each cycle, and my Calc pump going twice for about five minutes total. Simply run a hose from 12-oz plastic bottles filled with the two-part system (one bottle per additive) to the pump, then out from the pump into my refuge.

Start low dose to begin, and test daily making time adjustments until you get the readings you want. Don't really see too much change with water changes. I only dose Mag. on an as-needed basis, testing for Mag twice a month, and testing for Calc. and Alk. once a week.

 

[JCSReefing]

To get a better idea of what live stock is in my tank rather than list it all, here is a link

 

[Scott.h]

Everything looks good to me. Personally I wouldn't raise it. If I did, I would do it slowly over a few weeks. No way would I do the recommendation of 1.4 a day or whatever. Personally, not a chance. I've just burned too much stuff chasing numbers to know. But having a similar set up and no dosing pump on that tank, if I were you and had to raise kh, I'd start with 2 dosings per day 12 hours apart. I'd add 4 ml -2 times a day each day of the BRS ash solution. Test each day in the evening. That should get you close to where you want to be over 2 weeks. If that's not fast enough, increase a ml or so after 2 days. The reason there isn't a set amount or formula is every tank and demand is different.

 

[North Borders]

Why do you want your alk so high? A lot of reefers start getting nervous if their alk is approaching 8.5-9.

Use the BRS calculators. Plug in your dKh change, system volume and product you're using and voila!

You can do a test run of your pumps to make sure of their actual rates. I have a pair of the BRS "1.1ml/min" pumps but mine run at 1.5 and 1.4 ml/min

 

[iramack]

Here is my 45 JBJ rimless. Up now for 13 months. All good except for a pretty good bubble algae problem. It stays at 9-10 dkh and 410-430 cal. Nitrates 10 Phosphates whatever. Dosing B-Ionic 2 part and Brightwell Magnesium 10ml each every other day and 5 gallon water change weekly.
Not much room for more goodies. Time to plan the Red Sea reefer 4 footer............

D