Levels seem odd; anybody else with similar dosage?

Elton20 · Nov 5, 2015

I just tested my water with salifert and the alk and calc are low again. Slowly been raising my dosing from 45;40 (alk;calc) to now 80;85. Tank is pretty much fully loaded with corals, 2 clams, huge nem, and a lot of frags. This seemed like a high dosage for me, perhaps tests are off or something if the dosage is high. It is only a 40B

Elton20 · Nov 5, 2015

Trying to get my levels to 11dkh and 430ppm. LFS has amazing tanks with those levels and it seems to work well and grows corals fast. What I just tested was 8.9 dkh and 360ppm.

Lynn52 · Nov 5, 2015

What is your magnesium

Elton20 · Nov 5, 2015

Holy cannoli 855...now that I know the problem, how do I go about dosing mag now?

Lynn52 · Nov 5, 2015

Slowly bring it up. I use the BRS 2 part mag and their calculator to calculate how much. It says on the calculator how much you can safely increase it. I'd also carefully watch your calcium and alkalinity while you increase mag.

Randy Holmes-Farley · Nov 6, 2015

Hold on before dosing that huge amount of magnesium. It seems unlikely the magnesium is really that low.

How long has the tank been set up? It would take a long time of no magnesium additions and lots of calcium and alkalinity additions to get magnesium that low, unless the salt mix is defective (which salt mix? what salinity?) Magnesium depletes about 1/10 of the rate of calcium depletion (or less).

Try using that magnesium kit on some new salt water to see if it is working.

Elton20 · Nov 6, 2015

The tank has been up since January of 2014, I did do a 100% water change about a year ago. Went from manual dosing to using a doser about 6 months but I have always been dosing. I use reef crystals, 1.023 for a reef works fine for me. It was a salifert mg test. I'll try to test it today and see what's up.

Randy Holmes-Farley · Nov 6, 2015

Elton20 said:
The tank has been up since January of 2014, I did do a 100% water change about a year ago. Went from manual dosing to using a doser about 6 months but I have always been dosing. I use reef crystals, 1.023 for a reef works fine for me. It was a salifert mg test. I'll try to test it today and see what's up.

OK. At 1.023 the magnesium will be quite a bit lower than at 35 ppt (1.0264). The RC at that salinity might be around 1200 ppm (as opposed to 1400 ppm at 35 ppt).

Elton20 · Nov 6, 2015

Ok haha, I might raise it a bit then, I do 5 gallon water changes weekly, religiously, and it's kind of odd that mag is that low. I'll let you know how the testing goes tonight