New to me tank. Needing help with dosing.

Matthewjdm · Dec 10, 2018

Hey everyone!
So I had a friend who was moving and they couldn’t take their tank with them so I got the deal of a lifetime!
The only problem was idk how to fully take care of a reef tank as I only had a fish only tank before.
I know the basics. Ro/di water. Change it every few weeks. Feed frozen food to the fishes and corals. But nothing about dosing.
From the list they gave me I have the following;
Candy can corals

Big polyp blastocysts coral

Giant green polyp

Sun coral

Cyphastrea

Any help would be fantastic.

It’s a nuvo twenty gallon. With a ai prime light and a mo10 vortex

Also any ideas on how to make it look cleaner this is the picture now. It was pretty dirty before the move.

PatW · Dec 10, 2018

As stony corals grow, they make skeletons of calcium carbonate (limestone). They form this by taking Ca and ALK out of salt water. If you have stony corals and they are growing, you will have to dose ALK and CA. There are various ways to do this. I use 2 part. I measure the Ca and ALK levels in the tank. I dose ALK and Ca to keep the levels constant. To test, one needs test kits for ALK and Ca. Salifert makes them as does Red Sea and Hanna.

I do not see much in the way of limestone producing corals in your aquarium. You might be OK just test ALK every week and Ca every month. In high demand systems, people measure ALK daily.