How much do you dose? Need some advice

Benibarra23 · Mar 9, 2018

I have been having a hard time keeping up with Calcium and Alk.

Here are my details

150 Gallon tank, a lot of fast growing acros and Montis
Nitrate 0
Phosphate 0.02
Calcium for the past 4 months around 360 ppm
Alk for the past 4 months around 6.4 dkh
Mag has been insanely high since using Fritz Pro. (Stopped doing water changes 5 months ago and its still around 1500. Slowly coming down from about 1800 at one point

I dose using BRS Calcium and Alk (Soda Ash)

I have been testing weekly and adding more to my doser on almost a weekly basis to try and raise them both with no luck.

I am at about 108 ml per day of calcium and 90 ml per day of alk.

Is this insane? Should I keep adding more and more? I do have solid growth on all my SPS, no deaths or problems and everything seems happy. Just worry if I keep adding more and more eventually I will have a problem.

Is there a point where I am adding too much? Is the BRS stuff just not as strong as others and thats why I am using so much?

Petvit61 · Mar 9, 2018

I've compared my dosing (using B-Ionic) with some of my friends' with comparable tanks and noticed that BRS (while a quality product) definitely isn't as concentrated- and thus requires higher daily amounts than other 2 part dosing systems.

saltwaterpicaso · Mar 9, 2018

following I have just started dosing and my cal is 30.5 a day while my alk is only .25 ml I always thought they should be dosed equally

Randy Holmes-Farley · Mar 9, 2018

In the future, please post the doses in dKH per day. Otherwise, answers need to do the math themselves to determine if a dose is high or not. There's no need to compare to other tanks. We just need to know how much is being dosed.

I see the dose is only 1 dKH per day. That is not high or unusual. I might even say it is low for a tank with a lot of SPS.

Randy Holmes-Farley · Mar 9, 2018

saltwaterpicaso said:
following I have just started dosing and my cal is 30.5 a day while my alk is only .25 ml I always thought they should be dosed equally

What exactly are you dosing? Some additives are meant for equal parts dosing and some are not.

Do you mean 25 or 0.25 mL?

25 and 30 mL are very close to equal.

saltwaterpicaso · Mar 9, 2018

.25 brs alk I got all my values up for 3 days straight then I didn't do anything for 8 days I was out of town so I tested then did the calculators and divided the amounts I needed to get back to my values by 8 I came up with 30.5ml a day for calcium and .25ml for alk

Randy Holmes-Farley · Mar 9, 2018

saltwaterpicaso said:
.25 brs alk I got all my values up for 3 days straight then I didn't do anything for 8 days I was out of town so I tested then did the calculators and divided the amounts I needed to get back to my values by 8 I came up with 30.5ml a day for calcium and .25ml for alk

You definitely will not need ongoing need for 30 mL of BRS calcium additive with that tiny bit of alk needed. You are probably just bringing up a low calcium level and have very little demand for calcium and alkalinity.

saltwaterpicaso · Mar 9, 2018

after 8 days I started at 450ppm and ended with 365ppm

Randy Holmes-Farley · Mar 9, 2018

saltwaterpicaso said:
after 8 days I started at 450ppm and ended with 365ppm

I'm not sure what you are saying, but there's no way for calcium to decline in a reef tank if alk is not also declining at about 2.8 dKH for each 18-20 ppm decline in calcium (unless, of course, you are somehow adding alkalinity).

Benibarra23 · Mar 9, 2018

Randy Holmes-Farley said:
In the future, please post the doses in dKH per day. Otherwise, answers need to do the math themselves to determine if a dose is high or not. There's no need to compare to other tanks. We just need to know how much is being dosed.

I see the dose is only 1 dKH per day. That is not high or unusual. I might even say it is low for a tank with a lot of SPS.

Sorry I have looked for calculators but google isnt helping. How many dkh is in a ml?

saltwaterpicaso · Mar 9, 2018

I will retest tonight and get the values then test again in a week or is it easier just to test tomorrow then multiply the amount by 7

Randy Holmes-Farley · Mar 9, 2018

It’s determined using the tank water volume using a calculator like this:
http://reef.diesyst.com/chemcalc/chem_calc3.html

Mike Reef Addict · Mar 9, 2018

Randy Holmes-Farley said:
It’s determined using the tank water volume using a calculator like this:
http://reef.diesyst.com/chemcalc/chem_calc3.html

I was just about to fetch that but read the whole thread first [emoji12]

Benibarra23 · Mar 9, 2018

Thanks Randy!

cracker · Mar 9, 2018

the reef diesyst is a great calculator & is very accurate.

Benibarra23 · May 12, 2018

Anybody know if I can add double the amount of BRS soda ash and make it twice as potent? I’m dosing about 320 ml a day right now. Would like to cut that in half.

Randy Holmes-Farley · May 12, 2018

Benibarra23 said:
Anybody know if I can add double the amount of BRS soda ash and make it twice as potent? I’m dosing about 320 ml a day right now. Would like to cut that in half.

Not likely, no. I designed the recipe to be reasonably easy to dissolve, and with effort you can make it somewhat more potent, but not likely 2x.

Benibarra23 · May 12, 2018

Thanks Randy. Do you know if Soda ash is known not to be as potent as other alk supplements?

Clownfish2 · May 13, 2018

Benibarra23 said:
I have been having a hard time keeping up with Calcium and Alk.

Here are my details

150 Gallon tank, a lot of fast growing acros and Montis
Nitrate 0
Phosphate 0.02
Calcium for the past 4 months around 360 ppm
Alk for the past 4 months around 6.4 dkh
Mag has been insanely high since using Fritz Pro. (Stopped doing water changes 5 months ago and its still around 1500. Slowly coming down from about 1800 at one point

I dose using BRS Calcium and Alk (Soda Ash)

I have been testing weekly and adding more to my doser on almost a weekly basis to try and raise them both with no luck.

I am at about 108 ml per day of calcium and 90 ml per day of alk.

Is this insane? Should I keep adding more and more? I do have solid growth on all my SPS, no deaths or problems and everything seems happy. Just worry if I keep adding more and more eventually I will have a problem.

Is there a point where I am adding too much? Is the BRS stuff just not as strong as others and thats why I am using so much?

In my 110 gallon my dosers dispense 150mL of BRS soda ash and calcium per day. I think your dose is low and they should be dosed in equal amounts or approximate.