Please explain to me everything about adding and dosing suppliments and how to do this

[James w Lewis]

without upsetting the natural balance of the aquarium. I have been getting by for a long time with just changing half the water every month but my corals are getting to high end and to numerous and big to rely one this. I need to be able to add suppliments without killing everything. Unless I should just dump calcium chloride into the tank to bring up calcium?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

It would take hundreds of pages to tell you "everything" about dosing, but only a few to stop you from killing things.

This article describes the pros and cons of the best methods of supplementing calcium and alkalinity (which, optimally, are tied together rather than independent additives):

The Many Methods For Supplementing Calcium And Alkalinity
https://www.reef2reef.com/blog/the-many-methods-for-supplementing-calcium-and-alkalinity

 

[James w Lewis]

Thank you

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

You're welcome.

Happy Reefing.

 

[James w Lewis]

So obviously Kalk is the way to go but if I want to add calcium chloride what do I add with it and how do I add it to balance it out.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

So obviously Kalk is the way to go but if I want to add calcium chloride what do I add with it and how do I add it to balance it out.

While I choose to use limewater (kalkwaser), I wouldn't say it is the obvious way to go.

In the case of a tank just beginning to need supplementation, a commercial two/three part (like B-ionic) or a DIY (with ingredients from a place like Dr Foster and Smith or BRS) can be a good choice. This is probably the most common supplement method for reefers today.

For a one time correction to calcium, calcium chloride is the way to go. Dissolve it into fresh water and add to a high flow area.

This calculator shows how much would be needed for a given boost:

http://reef.diesyst.com/chemcalc/chem_calc3.html

 

[Uwdanno]

I'll say it for Randy

There are 1000's of post on this very topic. Do some searching of past experiences with kalk, dosing and supplements. The best way to learn is from the experiences of others!

 

[James w Lewis]

I am reading at this very moment. Im not being lazy but I have lost to many nice corals due to adding supplements willy nilly. I have purchased boxes of high end salt at wholesale prices and have relied on water changes twice a month. My tank looks nice but it is expensive. But then again losing a $500 Cornbread coral is expensive as well.

 

[Uwdanno]

The downfall of many new reefers is buying expensive corals before they understand husbandry and maintenance. Buying expensive salt and supplements doesn't mean anything if you don't research.

Step 1) Stop buying expensive corals
Step 2) Learn and practice reef maintenance on easy to care for corals
Step 3) Slowly progress into more difficult species.

You jumped to number 3 - tsk tsk.

Your first step to getting back on track is too admit you've gone to fast and commit to learning. If you cant do that, you will continue to lose pieces and grow increasingly frustrated.

There is no instant gratification in this hobby.

 

[James w Lewis]

Well, I have been doing this for 15 years total. When I stopped with all the fancy stuff and adding supplements and just started changing water once a month everything started taking off and growing like crazy. Now, however my corals are getting big and numerous and Im going to have to do something about adding more because water changes cannot keep up. I bought a ATOS to add Kalk instead of just pouring it in the sump. I will start looking for probes to test water parameters as I hate test kits with a passion.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

An ATO with kalk is a fine way to go. It may be all you need. It is about all I dose aside from iron for macroalgae and silicate for sponges (and regular water changes).

 

[Kaba]

Also don't forget looking into calcium reactors, might be more economical if you have a large system and would go through lots of 2 part.
As for dosing (and everything else) redundancy is key. I'm paranoid my doser is going to get stuck on and dump all my alk into the tank, rocketing the pH up and killing everything pretty quickly. I have my doser plugged in through my controller so if the pH goes up too much it'll shut down power until I turn it back on.

 

[JimWelsh]

As for dosing (and everything else) redundancy is key. I'm paranoid my doser is going to get stuck on and dump all my alk into the tank, rocketing the pH up and killing everything pretty quickly. I have my doser plugged in through my controller so if the pH goes up too much it'll shut down power until I turn it back on.

I'm curious about a few things. What dKh do you keep your tank at? What is the typical daily pH high/low swing your tank experiences? At what pH do you have your controller programmed to turn off the doser?

With these four values (dKh of tank, typical low pH, typical high pH, pH to shut off doser) I could estimate the dKh your tank would be at when the doser gets shut off in the event of a problem such as you describe.

 

[Kaba]

I keep my tank around 155ppm, which is about 8.5 dkh. pH peaks around 8.3 and dips to 8.05 at night. It's 55 gallons and I dose 1-2ml every other hour (2ml at night). During the day the pH will spike up to about 8.5 when it doses, and I have it set so at 8.65 it shuts off.

 

[JimWelsh]

I keep my tank around 155ppm, which is about 8.5 dkh. pH peaks around 8.3 and dips to 8.05 at night. It's 55 gallons and I dose 1-2ml every other hour (2ml at night). During the day the pH will spike up to about 8.5 when it doses, and I have it set so at 8.65 it shuts off.

Cool. Based on the spike to 8.5 as the "baseline" at 155ppm / 8.68 dKh / 3.10 meq/L, an increase of 0.15 pH units over this would mean the alkalinity spiked to appx. 245 ppm / 13.7 dKh / 4.90 meq/L. If the failure occurred at night, the spike could be significantly higher, perhaps as high as something like 16-20 dKh.

Definitely nice to be able to detect and stop the alk overdose, but it would still be a really significant alk spike in any event before the safety kicked in.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Cool. Based on the spike to 8.5 as the "baseline" at 155ppm / 8.68 dKh / 3.10 meq/L, an increase of 0.15 pH units over this would mean the alkalinity spiked to appx. 245 ppm / 13.7 dKh / 4.90 meq/L. If the failure occurred at night, the spike could be significantly higher, perhaps as high as something like 16-20 dKh.

Definitely nice to be able to detect and stop the alk overdose, but it would still be a really significant alk spike in any event before the safety kicked in.

How did you calculate that?

When I tested it in IO, an alk spike of 0.5 meq/L (1.4 dKH) using carbonate caused a pH spike of 0.35 pH units. For hydroxide (like limewater) the spike was 0.66 pH units, and for bicarbonate, the spike was actually downward until the tank blew off the excess CO2.

 

[JimWelsh]

I used the CO2Sys_v2 spreadsheet (http://cdiac.ornl.gov/oceans/co2rprt.html).

I first set the inputs to S=35, T=25C, TA=3100 umol/kg, pH(NBS) = 8.5, plus token amounts for Total P (0.01) and Total Si (0.04). I then let it calculate all the outputs. From those outputs, I used the calculated pCO2 value (210.5 uatm) as the input pCO2 value, and removed the input TA value. Recalculating yielded the same results as before. Next, I increased the pH value to 8.65. Recalculating once again, the TA increased as I described above.

Doing it another way, where instead of using the 8.5 pH value as my "baseline", I used the average of Kaba's daily swing values ( (8.30+8.05)/2 = 8.175 ) as the initial pH value, the pCO2 instead becomes 552.7. Using that as the input pCO2, and increasing the pH value from the average 8.175 by 0.15 units to 8.325, after recalculating the spreadsheet returns a TA value similar to, but not quite as high as doing it the first way (4.703 meq/L / 13.17 dKh / 235 ppm).

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

FWIW, those calculations assume the water is equilibrated with the CO2 in the air. If what you are wanting to prevent is a slow overdosing over a period of days, your numbers are the best way to go.

But if you are looking at a rapid overdosing (minutes to hours), I think the pH rise will be closer to what I show since CO2 won't have as much chance to enter the tank. So a dosing pump stuck on, for example, will be stopped. It is also a good way to limit the rise in pH and alk from limewater in an ATO that might get stuck on. .

 

[JimWelsh]

So, I was assuming that the pCO2 would remain fairly constant during the dosing spike, but I gather from your two previous posts here that, in fact, the substance being dosed may have a significant effect on the pCO2 in the water, making my assumption false. Am I on the right track here?

 

[Vivid Aquariums Verified Sponsor]

I have had great success using dosing pumps to automate the dosing process and keep CA, Alk, & Mg levels stable. More frequent smaller doses are always preferable to less frequent larger doses.

Dave