Randy's DIY two part magnesium

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

if u mean United States Pharmacopea, then no, this is a us specific term. In Europe i'm not even sure we have an equivalent, but on other hand the normatives here are very strict, so i'm guessing that anything that has to do with humans is chemically very clean. MgCl2 for foot baths has to be exactly that as the pharmacist was ready to have a bet on it.

BP is British Pharmacopoea. That's why I listed it as a possibility.

 

[taikss]

Randy - please find the cert below for the product.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

That is likely OK. I'd test it for ammonia before use.

 

[taikss]

That is likely OK. I'd test it for ammonia before use.

i will defo do that, but if i stir that stuff up with RO water, what should i be looking for from Ammo side? what's too high? Currently my tank has around 0,05ppm of ammo.

 

[taikss]

last but not least:

calculator tells me i need: 6476.4 ml
DYI article tells me 7¼ cups MAG flake and ¾ cup Epsom salts per G

BUT

coming from a metric system land - what measure is a "cup" in ml?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

i will defo do that, but if i stir that stuff up with RO water, what should i be looking for from Ammo side? what's too high? Currently my tank has around 0,05ppm of ammo.

Here's how I tested ammonia in calcium supplements:

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2004/3/chemistry

Ammonia Testing
There are several ways that calcium chloride can be prepared on an industrial scale. One of these (the Solvay process) involves ammonia. Consequently, ammonia has the potential to be present as an impurity in calcium chloride. For that reason, I tested each of the calcium chloride samples for ammonia. I used two different kits to test for ammonia: LaMotte and Red Sea. The results of the Red Sea kit are shown in Table 5.

Samples spiked with ammonia (from a standard containing 5.8 ppm ammonia as ammonium hydroxide in water) did not show as much ammonia as the test kit claimed, but it was clearly detectable in the two spiked samples (Dow and Kent Turbo Calcium). These spiked samples contained an extra 1.9 ppm of ammonia. One showed up as 0.5 ppm ammonia, and the other showed as 0.5-1 ppm. Since all of the unspiked samples showed 0.5 ppm or less of ammonia by the kit, I conclude that these samples have less than 3 ppm of ammonia in them as tested (accounting for dilution).

In short, none of these samples showed enough ammonia to be concerned about, even when adding enough to boost calcium by 200 ppm in one day. Since these solutions were 100,000 ppm in calcium, adding 200 ppm calcium to an aquarium entails adding 1/500th of the tank volume. At 3 ppm ammonia in the supplement, that means that the tank will be boosted by 3/500 = 0.006 ppm of ammonia, which I believe to be largely insignificant in a reef aquarium.

 

[taikss]

guessing that this stands:

• 1 cup equals 250 ml

 

[five.five-six]

This has been a long debated question. Many people claim to have used this sort of product long term with no ill effects but the discussions I have seen about it have been so polarizing that I’m not sure How many of the ice melt proponents would be forthcoming if they found a problem with purity.

That said, I haven’t seen anyone report a problem caused by ice melt product impurity. Really the question is how much risk are you willing to take to save a few bucks.

Hi. Just wanna know if I could use this for my DIY magnesium supplement? TIA.

plus EPSOM SALT.

 

[Blue Collared Aquatics]

Epsom salt from a drug store is USP grade and is fine for the sulfate.

Unless the calcium chloride is made by the Dead Sea Works, or is USP, FCC, reagent grade, etc, then I can't be sure it is OK (but it still might be).

I'm having a tough time understanding the diy formula. I want to make the magnesium. My tank is 500g. What would be my dosage per ml and value it raises ML to PPM. Thank you for your help!

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I'm having a tough time understanding the diy formula. I want to make the magnesium. My tank is 500g. What would be my dosage per ml and value it raises ML to PPM. Thank you for your help!

If you are using this as a magnesium supplement as opposed to a third part of a two part alk and calcium method, the recipe is different. The calculator below gives the mag boost in either case (they are the same potency). Just choose Randy’s Recipe magnesium part.

Reef Chemistry Calculator

This article has the stand alone magnesium recipes:

Do-It-Yourself Magnesium Supplements for the Reef Aquarium by Randy Holmes-Farley - Reefkeeping.com