Rocketfish
Community Member
You know, I run into this a bit on a 30 gallon fairly mature reef tank. I have a bear of a time trying to keep the KH over 7, and if I take a weekend away I have come back to find it sitting in the mid 4's with a calcium reading of 320. The magnesium seems to stay around 1400+ with very little effort though, and the PH reads in the low 7's, but doesn't seem to bother the corals. They still grow like crazy. I count it as a win if my KH numbers stay over 7 on a regular basis at this point. I do run a low nutrient system by dosing nopox, and I feed Red Sea AB+ daily. I have backed off on the NoPox lately trying to get the nutrients up a little bit, but they arent coming up hardly at all over the last 3 months and I stopped dosing nopox about a month ago.
For dosing, I have a doser that loses its mind every time the power has a hiccup so I have been dosing almost everything daily by hand except for KH (BRS soda ash). (I now have an amazon special Chinese-made doser for sale if anyone is interested... LOL) The consumption of the liquid soda ash had been around 30 to 40ml every 3 days, but that has become insufficient as some of the coral has grown quite a bit in the last year. I am now up to about 100ml of liquid soda ash every 3.5 to 4 days. It is too much to dose 1 time per day so I have an inverted 1 liter bottle that adds makeup water along with the soda ash gradually as the level drops. My tank evaporates water at a rate of 1 liter every 3.5 to 4 days almost like clockwork.
To try and change things up, I went 6 months dosing the red sea liquid calcium and Alkalinity foundation elements instead. I used less product in milliliters, but it is likely different chemistry, but I am not actually sure of that so don't hold me to the details. It is just a guess on my part. It would be interesting to know though... The problem with dosing the Red Sea is that I ended up going through a liter of KH in about a month and a liter of calcium in about 3 months, which makes dosing that product quite expensive to the scale of a 30 gallon tank. I know I could be spending more but that is how it feels. I seriously considered the 5 liter container next which is a possibility, however, I went back to dosing the BRS Soda ash and calcium.
The BRS stuff works, I just seem to use about twice as much liquid with the BRS stuff as with the Red Sea stuff. I dose Red Sea Trace minerals as well but not as much as it indicates. The colors are all good at the moment.
I say all that to get to the point that, even though my numbers are significantly lower than everyone recommends, the tank and fish all still "appear" to be flourishing. I use the red sea test kits at home and took samples to stores and other hobbyists to verify. I am not trying for super growth, but I am certainly seeing super growth. I will post a 1-year growth photo comparison of the WWC Yellow Tips in the tank and you will see what I mean.
I recently sent a sample off for an ICS test. I am curious what it will tell me as well.
Overall, I am still trying to prevent large swings in a short amount of time, so it is probably time to purchase a better dosing system. I just have a hard time dropping another $600+ on another automated piece of equipment for a little IM 30 gallon tank!
So far that tank has a UV sterilizer (Great addition for algae and other fish issues!), a chiller (Great for hot texas summers especially when the AC died last year...), a Gen 5 XR15 Blue light (I saw incredible growth improvement after it was installed, and it is running bluer with less white at around 65% of full power even at that.)
I want more fish and coral now which means I am forced to upgrade. I think a red sea 425 xl or something similar will be in my immediate future... The question is, will I still have all the same issues but worse? should I go with a calcium reactor? I tried going with the Kalkwasser dosing then adding KH as needed for about 3 months on the 30, but that was more difficult than what I am doing now.
After looking for photos of the growth, I didn't have a pic more recent than October of last year, but this shows the growth rate from February to October while struggling with low KH and calcium!
Since then I had to relocate the PC rainbow, it was about to be overshadowed. I will try and post a "Today" pick later.
For dosing, I have a doser that loses its mind every time the power has a hiccup so I have been dosing almost everything daily by hand except for KH (BRS soda ash). (I now have an amazon special Chinese-made doser for sale if anyone is interested... LOL) The consumption of the liquid soda ash had been around 30 to 40ml every 3 days, but that has become insufficient as some of the coral has grown quite a bit in the last year. I am now up to about 100ml of liquid soda ash every 3.5 to 4 days. It is too much to dose 1 time per day so I have an inverted 1 liter bottle that adds makeup water along with the soda ash gradually as the level drops. My tank evaporates water at a rate of 1 liter every 3.5 to 4 days almost like clockwork.
To try and change things up, I went 6 months dosing the red sea liquid calcium and Alkalinity foundation elements instead. I used less product in milliliters, but it is likely different chemistry, but I am not actually sure of that so don't hold me to the details. It is just a guess on my part. It would be interesting to know though... The problem with dosing the Red Sea is that I ended up going through a liter of KH in about a month and a liter of calcium in about 3 months, which makes dosing that product quite expensive to the scale of a 30 gallon tank. I know I could be spending more but that is how it feels. I seriously considered the 5 liter container next which is a possibility, however, I went back to dosing the BRS Soda ash and calcium.
The BRS stuff works, I just seem to use about twice as much liquid with the BRS stuff as with the Red Sea stuff. I dose Red Sea Trace minerals as well but not as much as it indicates. The colors are all good at the moment.
I say all that to get to the point that, even though my numbers are significantly lower than everyone recommends, the tank and fish all still "appear" to be flourishing. I use the red sea test kits at home and took samples to stores and other hobbyists to verify. I am not trying for super growth, but I am certainly seeing super growth. I will post a 1-year growth photo comparison of the WWC Yellow Tips in the tank and you will see what I mean.
I recently sent a sample off for an ICS test. I am curious what it will tell me as well.
Overall, I am still trying to prevent large swings in a short amount of time, so it is probably time to purchase a better dosing system. I just have a hard time dropping another $600+ on another automated piece of equipment for a little IM 30 gallon tank!
So far that tank has a UV sterilizer (Great addition for algae and other fish issues!), a chiller (Great for hot texas summers especially when the AC died last year...), a Gen 5 XR15 Blue light (I saw incredible growth improvement after it was installed, and it is running bluer with less white at around 65% of full power even at that.)
I want more fish and coral now which means I am forced to upgrade. I think a red sea 425 xl or something similar will be in my immediate future... The question is, will I still have all the same issues but worse? should I go with a calcium reactor? I tried going with the Kalkwasser dosing then adding KH as needed for about 3 months on the 30, but that was more difficult than what I am doing now.
After looking for photos of the growth, I didn't have a pic more recent than October of last year, but this shows the growth rate from February to October while struggling with low KH and calcium!
Since then I had to relocate the PC rainbow, it was about to be overshadowed. I will try and post a "Today" pick later.
