Neptune Aquatics

Dosing Pump?

Jeff Rehling

Jeff Rehling

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So I'm starting next week with a few corals...first time. Is a dosing pump really necessary? Please advise on the best way to run a balanced and healthy reef tank!

Thanks
 
It will also depend on how big your system is and how many hard corals are in the system. My bet is that if it’s a young system with small frags and corals, then you can just manually dose daily.
 
Yeah, lots of research (but it's fun) coming up.

The basics are SPS will need Ca, ALK, and Mg faster than water changes can keep up with. If you want, you can also dose a lot of other stuff too. If you look at AquaForest products, for example, they have three dosing liquids, all of which do the above, but they add a bunch of other trace minerals and such.

You'll probably be best off testing daily and hand dosing for a while. Once things seem to have a normal rhythm, you can then start automating. Just keep testing though to make sure nothing changes (like corals grow so large they start taking up more).
 
If you haven’t watched BRS’s 52 weeks of reefing, then I’m jealous :). You can binge stream it all week. If you only want to watch the alkalinity portions, they will break it all down for you.


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You should start with sharing some details about your tank, age and what you plan to keep in it, what maintenance you do etc. We can answer better once those things are available.
 
Good points...75g. One pulsating xenia. Blue tang, flame angel, two damsels, one clown, fox face wrasse, two goby's, couple snails and hermits. One harle and one cleaner shrimp. Sump with GFO reactor and skimmer and refuge. two kessil 360 led's. two power heads on opposite sides.

Planning to add:
Kessil light controller
Carbon reactor
Dual MP 40's
Additional rock (for scaping)

Corals:
Zoa's
GSP
others as I get skills
 
Neon Green Toadstool (Sarcophyton elegance). Several people in the club have the Tyree strain, which is particularly colorful.
https://goo.gl/images/I8mVjh

Neon green leather (Nephthya sp.)
https://goo.gl/images/BNGDMH

Duncan coral (Duncanopsammia axifuga)
https://goo.gl/images/y5Cpjn

Cauliflower Colt Coral (Klyxum sp.)
https://goo.gl/images/Qk2d91

Frogspawn (Euphyllia divisa)
https://goo.gl/images/PJe4au

These are in order from super easy to moderately easy. They all have large polyps, so you will see a lot of movement in the water column.
 
I would suggest BAR first, then Aquatic Collection in Hayward and Neptune Aquatics in North San Jose (Berryessa / Alum Rock). Become a supporting member and then post in the B/S/T forum what you are looking for.

On the topic of zoas, they can be really colorful but you are not going to see much movement from them. Many varieties are also extremely toxic and since I seem to be particularly sensitive to coral toxins in general, I have chosen not to work with them for now. Like GSP, zoas encrust and outcompete just about everything else, including other zoas. So if you want a variety of them, you have to be clever about placement. I used to place them on table-shaped live rock pieces, set on top of a smaller piece of rock. You can also put them on a large frag disk on the substrate. Once they reach the edge, they slow down a lot and you can contain them.
 
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