Need to be schooled on Dosing Pumps and Dosing!

[Barnabie Mejia]

I'm sure this has been touched on before, but I was wondering what are a few options for dosing pumps? I am super new in the community and I was looking to get some advice on combinations or equipment suggestions. I have been picking my LFS's brains to get some kind of direction, and he recommended a Jebao DP-4 pump. he was telling me that they are good pumps for the price and get the job done. I recently bought some quality testing equipment and a dual reactor for our 75g build and now that I have been doing some reading and testing, I need direction.

what are the dosing commons (fluid wise, as in what to actually dose) I have been leaning on BRS's calculator to know the amount to dose. My LFS suggested that for sure I should be dosing No Pox and mentioned 3 others but to be honest, he said it kinda fast and I don't remember.

Current tank before we transition to the 75g is a 25g with some coral (LPS mostly) a clown, anemone, and a lawnmower. 10g Water Changes per week with Instant Ocean (purple).

Looking forward to learning from the experienced reefers here!

Thanks,
Barnabie

 

[Hitman]

Personally I would stay far away from the Jabeo dosing pump. I had one and it about crashed my tank as it doesn’t stay calibrated. It was off by close to 2 ml off daily. I recalibrated it weekly and some weeks it had moved 40 ml out of calibration. I still wanted a reasonably inexpensive doser so I went with a Coral Box WiFi from reefbreaders.com for $180 I think and have not had a single issue in the year plus I’ve been running it.
There’s a reason the Jebao DP4’s are only $65 on amazon.

 

[Barnabie Mejia]

Personally I would stay far away from the Jabeo dosing pump. I had one and it about crashed my tank as it doesn’t stay calibrated. It was off by close to 2 ml off daily. I recalibrated it weekly and some weeks it had moved 40 ml out of calibration. I still wanted a reasonably inexpensive doser so I went with a Coral Box WiFi from reefbreaders.com for $180 I think and have not had a single issue in the year plus I’ve been running it.
There’s a reason the Jebao DP4’s are only $65 on amazon.

with the coral box, are you able to monitor it on your phone remotely ? what chemicals do you think are the most common to be dosing?

 

[loui]

I to would stay away from the Jaebo dosing pumps, from what I understand the dosser that where made a couple of years ago where actually pretty good, but the newer versions are complete crap. IMO for your current tank I would not be worried about dosing anything as long as you continue your 10 gallon weekly water changes I would assume that your parameters are good enough for LPS. Me personally if I had only LPS, soft corals, zoanthids, I would not even bother with dosing. The key is continuing to do the water changes doing them every week can start to get cumbersome, so if you get to that point of not wanting to do them every week, then you may need to dose ALK and CAL.

I use BRS 1.1ML pumps hooked up to my reef keeper and though it may not be exactly perfect they work out well enough I have been keeping SPS for a few years with this setup.

Also I am not a big fan of using NOPOX it can wipe out all the phosphates and nutrients in a tank before you realize what happen, it really is something that should only be used by experience reefers and also on well established reef tanks that testing is done at least weekly.

As far as coral box dosing pumps go, though I have never used them I have gotten a lot of gear from Logan over at reef breeders and I have no doubt that they would be a quality dosing pump.

 

[Hitman]

with the coral box, are you able to monitor it on your phone remotely ? what chemicals do you think are the most common to be dosing?

I can monitor it on my phone only if on the same WiFi net. Away from home on a trip I just trust it’s doing it’s thing. Most common liquid dosed is ALK, Ca, Kalk, Amino Acids, trace elements, etc. I dose all of those which is why I have 2 Coral box wifi’s

 

[Barnabie Mejia]

I can monitor it on my phone only if on the same WiFi net. Away from home on a trip I just trust it’s doing it’s thing. Most common liquid dosed is ALK, Ca, Kalk, Amino Acids, trace elements, etc. I dose all of those which is why I have 2 Coral box wifi’s

Awesome, good info! I have been on the testing, and right now I have high phosphate .113 last week. I checked it on Saturday and it was .291, but I also checked it right after a water change, which might have been bad, I don't know. checked again last night and it was down to .129, still high. so I dropped in .25ml of UltraLife liquid phosphate remover and control. it calls for .25ml for every 8 gallons, but I just put .25ml for the 25 gallons cause I didn't want to start to shock the coral in the tank, is this the right thought process?

I don't mind the water changes right now cause my sons like doing them with me, but I think they might get tired of it in the future lol!

 

[Greg Gdowski]

I use BRS dosers connected to an Apex Jr. I used to dose triton solutions but have been using aqua forest for quite some time. There is nothing special about their 3 solutions -- except the trace elements. I mix my solutions to keep costs down.

There are a few things you need to get very good at.
1. Calibrating your dosers.
2. Doing chemical tests. In particular, Alk, Ca, and Mg --- in that order.
3. Measuring your alkalinity usage. You will be adding chemicals that match your utilization.
4. NEVER over-react. I over-reacted to low Mg levels -- which turned out to be an expired Mg test kit that made me a fool. Mg --- is by far the hardest chemical to correct once you have made the error of adding too much.

IMO.... Getting good at these things only made me a better more knowledgeable reefer. I can always still change out water.

 

[furcifer208]

You don't need a dosing pump to start dosing. I would read Randy Holmes Farley's stuff, order some Salifert Test kits and get your water in order before the pump.

I do have a Jebao DP-4 pump but use it only for water changes and refilling my ATO reservoir. They are cheap but arrive put together backwards and so you have to do some reassembly once you get it. I don't trust it enough yet for dosing and am currently just adjusting manually and using Kalkwasser in the my ATO.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/time-for-dosing.596884/

 

[Barnabie Mejia]

I use BRS dosers connected to an Apex Jr. I used to dose triton solutions but have been using aqua forest for quite some time. There is nothing special about their 3 solutions -- except the trace elements. I mix my solutions to keep costs down.

There are a few things you need to get very good at.
1. Calibrating your dosers.
2. Doing chemical tests. In particular, Alk, Ca, and Mg --- in that order.
3. Measuring your alkalinity usage. You will be adding chemicals that match your utilization.
4. NEVER over-react. I over-reacted to low Mg levels -- which turned out to be an expired Mg test kit that made me a fool. Mg --- is by far the hardest chemical to correct once you have made the error of adding too much.

IMO.... Getting good at these things only made me a better more knowledgeable reefer. I can always still change out water.

I'm still learning the ins and outs of the testing, but I will definitely take your advice on the testing skills for Alk, Ca and Mg! and I didn't know there was an expiration date on the Mg testers. I will look at mine when I get home tonight to do testing. I will post up the full testing results to get some input on them!

How would I measure the Alkalinity usage?

 

[Greg Gdowski]

Measuring alkalinity usage is pretty easy. Pick a time of day... (eg. 6pm). Measure your alkalinity on day 1. Turn off all dosing. Maintain topoff so that salinity is the roughly the same at 6pm the next day. Remeasure your alkalinity on day 2 at 6pm. (alk(day2) - alk(day1))/24hrs. With aquaforest products, the 3 solutions are ionically balanced. What that means is that they are all dosed equally. You calculate the amount of alkalinity solution dosed based on that usage number. The other 2 solutions are them dosed with the same amount.

 

[Barnabie Mejia]

Measuring alkalinity usage is pretty easy. Pick a time of day... (eg. 6pm). Measure your alkalinity on day 1. Turn off all dosing. Maintain topoff so that salinity is the roughly the same at 6pm the next day. Remeasure your alkalinity on day 2 at 6pm. (alk(day2) - alk(day1))/24hrs. With aquaforest products, the 3 solutions are ionically balanced. What that means is that they are all dosed equally. You calculate the amount of alkalinity solution dosed based on that usage number. The other 2 solutions are them dosed with the same amount.

Good info! Are you using the 1+ 2+ 3+ ? that way I know what to search for and research, I don't know how many times I have looked up a product brand and started looking into the wrong product cause sometimes they have weird names for stuff and rookies like me start reading into things and then realize that it was the wrong one days later!

Thanks!

Barnabie

 

[Greg Gdowski]

Yes, but I mix it at home.