Cant get MG up-Need advise

Before reef tanks became doable, people who kept FO tanks kept their tanks at 1.021~1.022 in the mistaken belief that this helped lower the stress in their fish. Well, this is just plain silly as fish are osmoregulators. Osmoregulation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia They REGULATE the amount of salt in their bodies. That's how saltwater fish can swim up freshwater streams to spawn and their babies can leave a freshwater environment and adjust to saltwater. What's the problem with staying down at 1.021~1.022 you ask. Plenty. Our inverts (including corals) are osmoconformers and have no ability to adjust to surrounding saltwater salinity. They can live that low but they don't live nearly as long. Salt is cheaper than constantly replacing urchins, crabs, snails, cucumbers, and other clean-up-crew members. That's why for reef tanks (or FO tanks with a clean-up crew) keep their tanks closer to average NSW values.

The reality is that the animals that live in our tanks are a whole lot tougher than us hobbyists give them credit for. They don't have constant salinity, temperature, lighting, or pH. I still recommend that we try to maintain a constant balance in our tanks just to remove one or more variables but in the wild they don't get that. A tropical depression might form, turn into a tropical storm, then turn into a hurricane. While this is happening, a coral might not get hardly any light at all for a week or two. Not only to add insult to injury, there might be tons of rain dropping SG from 1.026 to 1.018~1.019 temporarily. Think about the corals that live in tidepools on patch reefs. Everyday, the tide goes out, the water they are living in starts evaporating, temperatures and salinity rises substantially and pH drops, then a couple hours later the tide comes back in with cool, less saline, higher pH water and they live through this day in day out. Think about what happens when an upwelling from the abyssal plains hits a reef. Temperatures drop 15~20 degrees, pH drops, salinity swings are outrageous.

Thought you might find this video interesting. Mind you, these corals are all alive just waiting for the tide to come back in.

 

8) Great video - great post, great thread.
Who else wants to go to FIJI now? Wow.

 

I'll chime in. My parameters as of 8-7-09 are as follows:
Cal - 440ppm
Alk - 4meq/L
Mag - 1280ppm
SG - 1.025
No3 - 0
Po4 - 0

I've recently made some changes to my dosing regimen. I started dosing kalk not too long ago instead of B-Ionic. I have been trying to raise my magnesium to around 1400 without much luck. I also read on BRS that you can dose 100ppm of mag per day, but I just find that too drastic of a dose. I use Seachem's Magnesium, and started with their recommended dose (5ppm per day) but have not seen an increase. I am SLOWLY making increases in dosing, but only time will tell if it will work (I'm confident it will). I'll be doing their max dosing recommendation (20ppm per day) soon...

I agree with what Inwall is saying. I try to keep my SG where it is just in case I get some Evap, it won't be such a be deal. I've never had my SG lower then 1.024, so I can't argue the fact..

 

Well earlier this morning I checked out most ot the winners of "tank of the month" from Reef Central's site and a common denominator with tanks that have their Mg at 1300+ was an SG level of at least 1.025.

That was like getting 36 people to reply to my thread :grinthumbs:

I'll still follow this to see if others throw out where their levels are.

Earlier I mentioned it would be a good "poll", being new here I will poke around to see if that's possible.

Thanks for all the input especially Curt!!

 

Spot on. I keep my SG at 1.027 and have no problem bringing the ca, mg, and kh up. It's 500+, 1500+, and 12 at this time.

 

Hi Reefjunkie

Been following the thread, but dont have anything like the experiance that Inwall has,and as such did not contribute to your thread

but when I find out RC members responded better , well thats not acceptable to me

Im currently running (tested 08.08.09)
SG - 1.026
Calc - 468
Mag - 1470
dkH - 12
ph - 8.26 (aquastar probe)

I do have Seachem powder additives - only have 2 x SPS corals , mostly softies so demand is not great and as yet my levels have stayed more or less at those listed above doing 10% weekly water changes only

using Red Sea Coral pro salt , changing to this from Reef Crystals , 8 weeks ago , simply wanted to try it out

Steve

 

I agree, unacceptable that he is moving between us and the other site;D

I try to keep my numbers as follows;

SG......1.025
Mag.....1500
Cal.......500
Dkh......12-15
PH.......8.0(night) 8.2(day)


Luna

 

and by way of proving my point Inwalls post generated a question from me that I did not want to ask ( scared of looking dumb)

I fully understand the fact that a given volume of liquid can support a fixed amount of Ions

what I dont know is - if you want to reduce your Cal for example you can increase your KH - where does the Calc go?

or to paraphrase the paraphrase - if you add more blue marbles, where do the yellow marbles go?

Steve

 

precipitation



Luna

 

thank you

Steve