Dosing help, please :)

Nothing wrong with hands on and staying touch with your tank, but if you have the means, consider a controller. We need to stay in control of out tanks, but our tanks also need stability. Controllers add to that greatly.

At low levels we can get by with hand dosing... but as demand grows so do dosing needs or the need for reactors. All those chemicals need to be added over time the same time every time. We invariable loose track or life happens and we get behind or what every. Controllers allow our tanks not to take the brunt of that.

We do need to learn dosing or reactors, then let the timer handle it and sit back and watch your tank thrive.... (while you do your daily checks instead of chores.)

 

Reviving and old thread here . . .

I am currently bringing up the levels of the 430 gallon tank I help take care of at work.

The fish guy that was taking care of the tank has not been testing the water params and needless to say they are all OFF.

They were as follows this AM:

Salinity: 30 PPT
kH: 6.1 dkH
Mag: 510 PPM
Calcium: 175 - YES 175!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Tested 2X with brand new Salifert Calcium Test kit
pH: 8.2 - only value close to correct.

Nitrates: 15ppm
Ammonia: .01 (forget the units) - but JUST barely detectable by the kit.

Now comes the question section:

We have to raise the levels significantly and obviously not all at once.

I have looked at the BRS Reef Calculator and about fell off my chair when I saw what it was suggesting to dose for the magnesium:
8.64 POUNDS of Mag. Sulphate and 7.3 POUNDS of Mag. Chloride.

That just seems WAYYYYY excessive. So they are saying over the course of the next 10 or so days I need to dump the entire contents of the BRS 2-Part Dosing Magnesium Sulphate and Magnesium Chloride powder jugs?!?!?!?!?!! This just seems ridiculous to me when it will only take 2.5lbs of the calcium supplement to bring it up to 450 from 175!!!

The other concern I have is that if each of the levels are not high enough or if the supplements are not dosed in proper proportion that the correct parameters will never be attained.

Anyone have experience with larger increases in water parameters on a larger system like this?

Any help is appreciated . . .

 

Always bring up the Magnesium first. Once you have it at the right level than you can go after ALK and Calcium. Without enough Magnesium, you can not hold the Calcium and/or ALK in solution (they will precipitate and you will be back at square one all over again).

 

Reeron,
That was exactly the information I needed.

What I am thinking is that because the calcium is SOO low that if I add calcium along with the mag ATM the levels are low enough that they will likely not precip out?

Is that a true statement? And would the same go for small increases in dkH?

Thanks again!

 

Your Magnesium should be about 3.25 times the level of your Calcium. So, I would not start adding Calcium until I had the Mag level at at least 1000ppm. That way you can be sure you will not precipitate Calcium out of solution.

This is going to take a long time to get the levels correct, as you should not increase Mag by more than 50ppm per day. It's going to take about 10 days to get to 1000ppm of Magnesium, then you can safely start raising Calcium at 20ppm per day. It will take about 10 days to get Calcium to 400ppm, at the same time you will reach around 1450ppm of Magnesium. Alkalinity then can be raised at 1 dKH per day.

I'm thinking it's going to take about a month to get the levels straight. But, it did take a long time for the levels to get this low, so 1 month is short in comparison.

 

Very informative!!

This makes me feel much better that I am on the right track now!!!

I did feel as though it would take a while to get the levels up.

 

Just as a follow up to this post - I am having much success and already seen results in terms of coloration and PE with the corals whilst adjusting the parameters in the tank.

I must admit a major shortcoming/stupid mistake on my part.

I tend to be guilty of over-complicating things and I was consistent with the testing - I overcomplicated.

The test kits (all Salifert) all have concise and clear directions. However I took it upon myself to "make it better". Not thinking at all about the directions, I was drawing the 1ml syringe for the titration solution and instead of determining my parameter value by the reading on the syringe (as the directions clearly indicate) I thought I was making the test more accurate by bypassing the airspace in the syringe and measuring the total added instead of reading the value of the syringe.

The result: I was inverting my values. So where I thought I had less than 200 PPM calcium - the actual level was more like 380PPM. The other parameters were similarly not as terribly off from target range as thought. This resulted in me needing only half of the ammount of the corrective bulk chemicals in the tank and also means that it will only take something like 2 weeks to correct the levels and not two months!!!


Just wanted to share my mistakes with others in the hopes that they may be avoided in the future!