Are chemical/additives necessary?

I just ordered a protein skimmer and the person who's helping me is strongly recommending me to buy the reactor along with the chemical/additives like calcion, DKH, iodine, magnesium, stronium and PurpleUp. I have about 75lbs of nice live rocks and some tell me that all I need is a skimmer. What do you think?

 

I can shed a lil Light on your ?.... With rutine "sp" water changes you replenish all thoes chemicals and trace elements... Then the Next question for you will be... What is your plan with your tank..?? Fowler "fish only" or you plan on goin with a reef set up..?? If you lan on doin corals.. Dependin on how many and how fast they absorb key minerals they will depend on a lil booster of Chemicals in a bottle... If you tank is still goin throught the Cylcle stages use some purple up to get a jump on your coraline alge to grow.. ANd lastly How long has your tank been set up..?? How big ? And what kinda filter system you have hooked up..??

 

Reactors and skimmers do two completely different things.

The skimmer removes waste products from the water. Reactors put chemicals into the water that help corals and such grow.

 

Sounds like they are strongly recommending you spend a lot of your money at their store.

 

Don't buy any of that stuff until you get to a point where you are testing for it.
How old is your tank?
Don't buy purple up ...it's a marketing gimmick(sorta). Coraline won't grow any faster with that. Keep your magnesium , calcium and alkalinity in line and it will grown naturally.
I don't test for iodine therefore don't add it.

At some point you will probably need to add supplements ...depending on the load the corals require. As said above if you only have fish... you may get everything you need from water changes.
You can raise you mag with epsom salt, alkalinity with baking soda. Although I use Magnesium chloride and kent buffer. It's cheap from bulkreefsupply.com and I also use calcium chloride from there.

 

Mine's a 55 gallon.

 

As stated below, if you do regular WCs, you dont need to add any additives. Unless you are over stocked and your corals are consuming the elements faster than your doing the WCs. Luna