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Dosing tips?

Hey all, I have quite a few frags in my 40B, so I decided it was probably time to check calcium magnesium and alk consistently now. I used the Red Sea test kit and found out my magnesium was pretty low. I went to Petco and bought fluval magnesium, and then I proceded to dose a small amount and re-test. I was dosing about 5 ml at a time, and I wasn't noticing a difference. I did some research and figured out I had to dose a ton! So I ended up dosing a tad more than a third of the bottle to raise my MG by 80 ( I read that you don't want to raise it by more than 100 a day ). So my question is, is there a more cost effective product to dose with? At this point I feel like the cost of salt from more water changes would be more cost effective than dosing this fluval MG lol
 
If you do large WC frequently and don't have heavy stony coral load you can skip dosing all together. The cheapest dosing solution probably is BRS dry bulk crystals and you just mix it yourself.
 
This. Do more WC and it will take care of your Mg levels. Will help with your alk n Ca levels too. But I feel it cause spikes up and down as they are used up then replenished with WC.

Part of the reasoning for smaller more frequent wc or 'gasp' no wc at all!!!!!!


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This. Do more WC and it will take care of your Mg levels. Will help with your alk n Ca levels too. But I feel it cause spikes up and down as they are used up then replenished with WC.

Part of the reasoning for smaller more frequent wc or 'gasp' no wc at all!!!!!!


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My blue tang break out in ich after every water change, this motivate me to do less lol.
 
I use BRS. There are 2 parts that you need to mix in. Magnesium Sulfate + Magnesium Chloride.
There are some cheaper DIY, but don't seem worth it.

Generally, if you have ignored Mg for a long time, you have to dose a ton, but maintaining it takes a lot less.

I mix a bit extra in my water change water.
As a bonus, my water change water has less precipitate.
 
Tiny dip in temp, PH didn't even budge

upload_2017-3-22_16-1-54.png
 
@Fish Boss Do water changes to bring it back up to specs and then start dosing it on a weekly basis with your water changes or daily with a doser. For reference, my tank is a 47G and my Mg is currently sitting at 1305 ppm with approximately 10mL added per day to keep it at that level.
 
Yeah that is one bit I can't figure out. No prazi. No Calrx, house is adequately ventilated, the only thing I can blame on is the salt mix?

http://www.reef2reef.com/threads/should-i-care-about-my-ph.296501/

@Fish Boss sry for the hijack lol
You better be sorry for the hijack! Jk I'm learning lol. I really like the idea of adding extra MG to the water change water. @Ibn hey Eric, the frag of rainbow in Spain you gave me is looking nice, slow growing because of my low MG I'm assuming, but great polyp extension, it's covered the whole top of the plug, just starting to come down one side, and now there's another bump that I believe will turn into another branch. I'm hoping for faster growth when I get my levels to their appropriate levels
 
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Hey all, I have quite a few frags in my 40B, so I decided it was probably time to check calcium magnesium and alk consistently now. I used the Red Sea test kit and found out my magnesium was pretty low. I went to Petco and bought fluval magnesium, and then I proceded to dose a small amount and re-test. I was dosing about 5 ml at a time, and I wasn't noticing a difference. I did some research and figured out I had to dose a ton! So I ended up dosing a tad more than a third of the bottle to raise my MG by 80 ( I read that you don't want to raise it by more than 100 a day ). So my question is, is there a more cost effective product to dose with? At this point I feel like the cost of salt from more water changes would be more cost effective than dosing this fluval MG lol

Yes there are more effective products to dose with and probably better ways to do it, but first what's the make-up of corals in the tank?I have a 120 that's stocked full of LPS and I dose 25/25/18 in Milligrams - Calc, Alk, Mg). I also have a 25 gallon frag tank chock full of SPS that I just had to bump up to 45/45/35 and I don't think it's going to be enough to keep up.

As for products I use ME crystals and mix with RO. Each mix makes a gallon of chemicals and costs $20.00.
 
I used to dose weekly by hand and but noticed a HUGE difference when I started dosing multiple times per day with a doser. It was one of the steps that made an immediate difference in growth and tank health.
 
I don't remember the exact numbers I was dosing in my 30 gallon but I remember I needed to dose mg way more than alk or Ca to maintain it. I would daily add ounces instead of ml like the alk and Ca. I think my situation was fairly rare though. I used rc for my salt mix. I even took 5 days off from dosing and it dropped exactly what I didn't dose so I kept up doing what I was doing. I got tired of manually dosing every day so I got a jaebo and set it to dose every hour.
 
I don't remember the exact numbers I was dosing in my 30 gallon but I remember I needed to dose mg way more than alk or Ca to maintain it. I would daily add ounces instead of ml like the alk and Ca. I think my situation was fairly rare though. I used rc for my salt mix. I even took 5 days off from dosing and it dropped exactly what I didn't dose so I kept up doing what I was doing. I got tired of manually dosing every day so I got a jaebo and set it to dose every hour.

Yeah I'm using IORC and pretty much seeing the same thing. I'm going through mag way quicker than alk/cal
 
I have a bunch of random corals. 5 Rhodactis shrooms, 1 small jawbreaker, 1 big discosoma, 3 smallish pieces of Xenia, 2 fully covered frags of clove polyps, 5 different chalices ~ 1-1.5 inches, 2.5 by 2.5 inch galaxea, 3.5inch random acro, 2.5 inch acro, small rainbow in Spain acro, 1x1 seasons greetings monti, 1x1 rainbow monti, 5 different frags of Zoas, 1 big head of Duncan, with 2 medium heads, and a bunch of tiny heads, 1 torch 2 heads, 1 hammer 2 heads, 1 frogspawn 1 head, 1.5x1 Orange leptastrea, 2 small cyphastreas, 1.5x1 platygyra or favites ( I don't know the difference) 1.5x1 favia, and a small fox coral. I think that's it. Lots of small stuff, but I think it's still pulling significant CA and MG
 
I have a bunch of random corals. 5 Rhodactis shrooms, 1 small jawbreaker, 1 big discosoma, 3 smallish pieces of Xenia, 2 fully covered frags of clove polyps, 5 different chalices ~ 1-1.5 inches, 2.5 by 2.5 inch galaxea, 3.5inch random acro, 2.5 inch acro, small rainbow in Spain acro, 1x1 seasons greetings monti, 1x1 rainbow monti, 5 different frags of Zoas, 1 big head of Duncan, with 2 medium heads, and a bunch of tiny heads, 1 torch 2 heads, 1 hammer 2 heads, 1 frogspawn 1 head, 1.5x1 Orange leptastrea, 2 small cyphastreas, 1.5x1 platygyra or favites ( I don't know the difference) 1.5x1 favia, and a small fox coral. I think that's it. Lots of small stuff, but I think it's still pulling significant CA and MG

In my limited experience of tracking my own dosing I'm betting they are not consuming significant amounts of Calc and Alk above what's replenished by water changes. My experience has been it's only when I see significant growth in SPS that the usage of Calc and Alk go way up. Now I have always done fairly good size water changes every week and that certainly helps. Bottom line though is you'll never know until you get a baseline number steady and then track it every few days. Once you get to that point it's easy to see exactly how much is being used up by the corals.
 
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