When and how much to dose??

[Olby Toribio]

Hello guy , so i setup my coralbox dosing pump today ,

I tested my water today so check my level

Alk-11.8

Calcium-450

Magnesium- 1460

Those are my result , im dosing red sea foundation ABC
I when in the website for guide and i see daily dose
For
Alk -9ml daily
Mag-1ml daily
Calcium - 3ml daily

Should i keep it like that or just lower it and multiply it by how many time in a day i will run the doser pump?

 

[tupes]

• How old is your tank?
• What corals do you have?
• Have you tested your water 2 or 3 days in a row to see how much the elements are dropping?

All those levels you posted are acceptable but on the high side. What makes you want to dose?

 

[Ron Reefman]

tupes asked all the right questions.

You know your current Ca, alk and Mg levels. So don't dose anything as your levels are on the high (but safe) side of 'normal'. Now start testing your water every day and see how much these levels move down. If you don't have a lot of lps and sps corals, they won't go down very fast at all and you might end up testing every other day or even just twice a week.

OK, so lets say in 10 days your Ca is down to 400 (which is still perfectly OK). But now you know that your system used 50ppm of Ca over 10 days. Next you go to a reef chemistry calculator website like this one:
http://reef.diesyst.com/chemcalc/chemcalc.html

You tell it how many gallons your tank is and what your current Ca level is and that you want to raise it back up to 450 like it was 10 days ago and what Ca additive you are using. Lets just say it calculates that you need 100ml of whatever Ca additive you are using. OK, 100ml divided by 10 days is 10ml per day and that's what you will set your dosing pump to do.

You'll go through the same kind of calculations for alk and Mg. Odds are alk will be the highest, Ca will be less but fairly close and Mg will be much, much lower.

 

[Olby Toribio]

• How old is your tank?
• What corals do you have?
• Have you tested your water 2 or 3 days in a row to see how much the elements are dropping?

All those levels you posted are acceptable but on the high side. What makes you want to dose?

Alright thanks
I just turn off my pump to do this

 

[Olby Toribio]

tupes asked all the right questions.

You know your current Ca, alk and Mg levels. So don't dose anything as your levels are on the high (but safe) side of 'normal'. Now start testing your water every day and see how much these levels move down. If you don't have a lot of lps and sps corals, they won't go down very fast at all and you might end up testing every other day or even just twice a week.

OK, so lets say in 10 days your Ca is down to 400 (which is still perfectly OK). But now you know that your system used 50ppm of Ca over 10 days. Next you go to a reef chemistry calculator website like this one:
http://reef.diesyst.com/chemcalc/chemcalc.html

You tell it how many gallons your tank is and what your current Ca level is and that you want to raise it back up to 450 like it was 10 days ago and what Ca additive you are using. Lets just say it calculates that you need 100ml of whatever Ca additive you are using. OK, 100ml divided by 10 days is 10ml per day and that's what you will set your dosing pump to do.

You'll go through the same kind of calculations for alk and Mg. Odds are alk will be the highest, Ca will be less but fairly close and Mg will be much, much lower.

Thanks, im gonna wait a week or 10 day n gonna check that

 

[Ron Reefman]

If you don't have much lps or sps waiting a week is probably ok. But you'd be better off testing every couple of days at the start.