Magnesium Issues with testing...

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Something is chewing it.

I disagree. There’s no sink for magnesium except for calcium carbonate deposition, and that isn’t more than 1/10th of the calcium decline.

There’s no magic unknown chemistry here.

 

[Reef Puncher]

You would have to do some math:

• first establish current level of Magnesium by testing diluted sample ( let's say 50% dilution)
• find out what is magnesium level in freshly mixed saltwater you want to use to do water changes
• For example if Mg is very high, lets say over 2000ppm and your newly mixed saltwater Mg content is 1400ppm, than one water change of 20 gal ( for 120gal tank) would drop Mg to about 1900ppm, second water change of 20 gal would drop it to about 1816ppm and so on

oh thats genius to dilute and do math. my magnesium is off the charts. i think i misread the instructions it made it sound like 50mls would raise it up 50ppm but i think i accidently raised it up beyond 1700....not sure if thats gonna hurt corals or not...its only been a few days imma do another water change when i get home. ill do the dilution method you mentioned. i hope i dont kill my corals

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

oh thats genius to dilute and do math. my magnesium is off the charts. i think i misread the instructions it made it sound like 50mls would raise it up 50ppm but i think i accidently raised it up beyond 1700....not sure if thats gonna hurt corals or not...its only been a few days imma do another water change when i get home. ill do the dilution method you mentioned. i hope i dont kill my corals

Time for RMM;

Just say NO to magnesium testing: RMM is born

OK, this thread has been many years in the making, and I'm posting it here since folks in the chem forum are probably already tired of all the threads relating to problematic magnesium testing. I'm going to propose a method, let's call it the Randy Magnesium Method, or RMM for short. All good...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[Seansea]

Me personally i would not stop testing for mag. Mine gets depleted in my tank. And my testing is accurate
as i double check it with icp every couple months. Pretty sure it has something to do with pulling gobs of hair algae out of ATS every 10 days. Even with dosing all for reef and calcium rising and alk holding stable mag was going down pretty good. Can see a difference in my euphelia when mag starts to creep down.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Me personally i would not stop testing for mag. Mine gets depleted in my tank. And my testing is accurate
as i double check it with icp every couple months. Pretty sure it has something to do with pulling gobs of hair algae out of ATS every 10 days. Even with dosing all for reef and calcium rising and alk holding stable mag was going down pretty good. Can see a difference in my euphelia when mag starts to creep down.

Some folks have noted a need for magnesium when using AFR. I do not think hair algae can do that, but growing coralline algae can.

Need help with AFR dosing - not enough mag but too much Alk ?

Hello, I’ve been using All for reef (powder) for about 2 1/2 months and the tank is 5 months old (some of the rocks are 12 months old). I started at 4 ml and slowly increased to get the right amount of nutrients. Right now I’m at 9,0 ml per day. It’s doing a good job at maintaining...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[Seansea]

AFR is not as completly balanced as they say but i think that would br hard to achieve for any company for every tank out there with all the variances.

Its possible its the corraline which i do have quite a bit of but the corresponding drop equates more to the amount of hair algae that comes out of my tank. Before i was dosing afr my icp's would come back low on almost everything. I started dosing captiv8 trace+ then moved to afr and still have to put a small amount of captiv8+, manganese and magnesium in my ato to keep up even with using AFR.

 

[DanyL]

AFR is not as completly balanced as they say but i think that would br hard to achieve for any company for every tank out there with all the variances.

Its possible its the corraline which i do have quite a bit of but the corresponding drop equates more to the amount of hair algae that comes out of my tank. Before i was dosing afr my icp's would come back low on almost everything. I started dosing captiv8 trace+ then moved to afr and still have to put a small amount of captiv8+, manganese and magnesium in my ato to keep up even with using AFR.

I looked at their concentrations, the Magnesium supplement is quite diluted.
It’s likely that you’re adding just enough additional Magnesium to compensate for the coraline growth.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

AFR is not as completly balanced as they say but i think that would br hard to achieve for any company for every tank out there with all the variances.

Definitely. No all in one product can achieve it.