Question about installing my first dosing pump and dosing container

[marcosnano]

My nano reef drops in alkalinity very often, I rise kH by adding sodium bicarbonate but I believe those instabilities keep my corals from prosper even more, so I bought my first doser and container.

So the question is, after I make calculations how much water with sodium bicarbonate weekly I want my tank to receive from container, I'm also curious what else can I add to the container together with sodium bicarbonate?

Right now I'm adding manually drops of ammino acids daily to he tank, so can I add a weekly dose of that to that container? What about vitamins that I add weekly, or iodine supplement and phytoplankton?

Thanks!

 

[Court_Appointed_Hypeman]

I do the BRS hybrid balling method with trace A and trace K from tropic marin. So if you were to dose both alk and calc, I would add the small amounts of those traces directly to your alk and calc reseviors. I do and I feel like its a really good bonus for stability.

But if you are only dosing alk, idk if that will upset any sort of trace balance.

There are some other things you can add, but I would be cautious about a specific addition without at least someone's claim of experience adding it without percipitation issues or otherwise.

I've seen threads where interactions between stock alk solutions and users mentioning adding things such as phosphate or amonia for dosing to them, but I am aware of, at lest in those cases, you have to use the correct molecules to prevent percipitation.

Iodine/iodide will probably matter which molecule it is, phyto might not survive in the no salinity environment of an alk supliment. Unless its dead, then maybe its possible. I think one of the guys from reef beef doses phyto via doser, but not in their alk suppliment.

 

[August]

I wouldn't mix anything else in the container than your Sodium Calcium just so that you can tune your Alk consumption.

For a nano, wouldn't an auto water change setup be more beneficial? I don't have a nano, but I'm curious what your approach is to doing dosing instead of replacing those elements via water changes.

Phytoplankton is complicated to doze automatically. I have seen two setups on reef2reef , but it needs two dozing pumps and an air pump. Something probably too cumbersome for a nano setup and equipment footprint.

How to automate a phytoplankton culture

Giving that we love tech and use any excuse to reduce labour in our tanks I will give you below the diagram to automate a phytoplankton culture. There’s no need to split cultures weekly, just set it up and forget it. It’s really simple and it worked for me for two consecutive years without...

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