New to dosing

[Giovanni Guzman]

I am very new to the dosing world. I know i want to start dosing my tank with Alkalinty, calcium, magnesium, strontium, and iodine.

My question is how much should i dos and how often as well? Do i dos everything at the same time or dos one at a time on differnt days? My tank size is a 40 breeder.

 

[cwalton00]

Dosing is determined by testing. Dont just start dosing blindly it will do more harm then good.

Most people only dose the big three calcium, alkalinity and mag. Usually not a whole lot of mag though.

 

[Giovanni Guzman]

Dosing is determined by testing. Dont just start dosing blindly it will do more harm then good.

Most people only dose the big three calcium, alkalinity and mag. Usually not a whole lot of mag though.

Ok so with those 3 how much and how often should i dos then.

 

[rkpetersen]

As above, first test calcium, alk, magnesium to establish your levels. Then keep testing to determine your rate of consumption. If levels are dropping and you have stony corals that are clearly growing, you should dose. You can start doing it manually but the sooner you get it on a doser the happier you'll be, especially for calcium and alk (much easier to keep up with magnesium dosing manually.) If doing manual dosing, divide total daily amount into as many divided doses as you have time for; small amounts more often are better than large amounts less often. Don't dose calcium and alk at the same time, especially not near each other; much of it will precipitate out immediately and not be available for your corals. As far as strontium and iodine, be very careful; the available test kits are terrible for both, so any dosing you do is basically blind (unless you want to send samples for ICPOES testing.) Also, the available strontium and iodine supplements generally recommend far too much be used that can easily put you into overdose range.