I use BRS dosers to dose Alkalinity and Calcium. Magnesium, the 3rd part of 2 part, I dose manually once a month. I bought and use this kit from BRS http://www.bulkreefsupply.com/brs-2-part-calcium-alkalinity-total-package-with-dosers.html and have it plugged in to the 1st and 4th port of my Reef Keeper. That is very important with a Reef Keeper. They need to be plugged in to 1 and 4. If you do not have a controller you will need to buy 2 timers to use the pumps properly. The pumps dose at a rate of 1.1 ml per minute. The other option is to just buy the dry goods, mix them individually, and dose manually. Both ways are perfectly acceptable and easy to do. Since dosing requirements fluctuate with growth, what I dose now may not work next month. Right now I dose Calcium for 10 minutes, 7 times a day, starting at 10:00 am. Alkalinity is dosed similar but on a slightly different schedule. Alk is 10 minutes, 7 times a day, starting at 2:30 pm. They are dosed at different times for multiple reasons. First and foremost if dosed at the same time they precipitate out and render themselves useless. It looks like a snow storm in your tank. Another reason I dose the way I dose is because Alk has a tendency to raise your pH. I don't want my pH raising during the middle of the day when it is already reaching a higher number on its own. If I dose it into the evening when pH is lowering it helps keep pH stable a little longer in the day. That brings me to the last reason, stability. Coral want stable and consistent conditions. 7 doses of 11 ml each is a lot more stable and consistent than 1 dose of 77 ml. How do you dose? John
Sorry we didn't get around to the discussion Sat. Maybe this thread will suffice or serve as a basis for the discussion next meeting? I dose much the same as John. I started with the same kit from BRS. Now I've gotten a little lazy and by the preportioned packages...not really that much more cost. I dose via BRS pumps with alkalinity every hour of the day at the top of the hour for alkalinity and the bottom of the hour for calcium(dosing them together or close together will cause precipitation). Currently dosing 5 minutes for Alk and 4.5 minutes for calcium. That's a total of 132 cc alk and 119 cc of calcium per day. I dose this way to try and achieve stability which in some ways is the most important thing to strive for. There is a wide range of alk/calcium/nitrate/phosphate that are present in thriving tanks. The one thing these tanks have in common is stability. I don't worry about the pH effect of dosing alkalinity. Dosing such small amounts spread out over the day makes the impact very small and very short lived. pH varies in nature for the same reason it does in our tanks (photsynthesis) and chasing it isn't something I do. I only monitor it because a big change tells me something is up. Some things I've learned for my system. 1. Calibrate the dosing pumps. What does that mean. Run the pump for a set length of time in to a measuring device(picture below) and measure the output/time. Use this instead of 1.1 ml/minute if it's different for that pump. I have 3 pumps and two are 1.1 ml and one is 1.0 ml. 2. Start low, measure parameters and adjust. When starting new I may test every day for a while until I get close to what the tank needs to stay stable. 3. parameter goals depend....especially on nutrient levels. If nitrate and phosphate are very low, alkalinity should not be much above 8 dKh. SPS suffer with high alk and low nutrients. With detectable nitrates (I'm aiming for 2-5) you can pretty much run your alkalinity anywhere from 7.5-11. Watch your coral they will tell you what they like. Remember, the higher the alkalinity the more likely precipitation. This will be manifested by precipitate on pumps and heaters, sand clumping together, etc. 4. You don't have to have a controller to automate your dosing. These simple timers can run your dosing pumps for up to 8 times per day. You could set them every 3 hours through out 24 hours or do it closer together during the lower pH times of the day if you choose. http://www.bulkreefsupply.com/hamilton-24-hour-grounded-digital-timer.html 5. You must keep Magnesium up. Mag doesn't have to be dosed often. For me every 2-3 weeks manually. However, if you don't keep your Mag up you will find it nearly impossible to keep your alk/calcium stable. 6. You don't have to dose at all if you don't have much stoney coral. Softies, zoas, palys and fish don't consume or require much alkalinity. FOWLR and softy tanks can be maintained with simple water changes. SPS tanks and LPS tanks can be, especially if they're small but as the colonies mature water changes won't keep up. 7. Your dosing requirements can tell you a lot about what's going on in your tank. Example : If your alkalinity consumption suddenly drops something is wrong that is reducing growth. You may see the change in alkalinty demand far sooner than you see something visually in the tank. Calcium simply because of the levels it exists at in the tank don't change as rapidly as alkalinity.
Funny how Doc and I - totally independent of one another, have very similar thought processes and setup....you weren't diving around Hawaii in the early 70's were you? If so....nah, never mind. We probably DON'T wanna talk about it....nonetheless... I have a Profilux setup with 4 head dosing pump. I dose a vinegar/vodka mixture that's 1:1:2 ratio of Vin/Vod/H2O that's dose every day via one of the pumps along with alk and ca on the other 2 heads. Ca and Alk are dosed every hour throughout the day with alk at top of hour and Ca at bottom. Leftover gallon jugs from vinegar are my holding vats. I even use the same measured shot glass Doc has to calibrate my dosers. I have gone through using chemicals from a pool supply stores (both Alk and Ca), washing soda, and then settling on using Ca from BRS and Alk per Randy's Recipe on Adv Aquarist (i.e. baked baking soda): http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-02/rhf/ I also use a Stenner dual head pump to do automatic water changes and I'd mix up 100 gallons at a time using IO Reef Crystals. I noticed that the Alk was just bouncing all over the place as I ran the AWC to do anything that seemed to have any impact (i.e. 5 gal or more day). The new water mixed up would have alk starting at like 11 or 12, then decreasing over time and settling at 7 by the end of the 1.5-2 week or so when the 100 gal water vat was empty. NEVER had to dose Mag since RC runs that so flippin high. I also had to drastically alter the alk and ca doses to be wildly different (usually you dose them at the same rate). Since RC has soooo much Ca in it I wound up dosing a lot of alk in perspective to Ca. My Ca was almost always really high in ratio to the alk (not necessarily a PROBLEM by itself..but still annoyed me). I also in a previous tank battled dino/cyano and the cure was....stop changing water. RC annoyed me with such high alk, high ca in the tank, and the brown goo/whateveritis left in my NSW mixing vat. I also noticed the salinity changing often, even with the same salinity with the NSW going in...I found out this is likely due to the Alk and Ca creating excess salt in the tank which folks usually just address with more H2O changes (this is where the magical 10%/week change came from IMO). Significant or reading error? Dunno. Annoyed me nonetheless. Soooooo....I've now totally switched up what I'm doing in an effort to keep the alk and ca steady and much lower than what I previously ran. Basically I've blamed the salt and have switched out to Tropic Marin Reef Pro for a few reasons. First and primary being that since my nutrients just run low (NO3 and PO4 = 0) I have indeed noticed much happier corals at lower alk levels (8-7). This is where TM is naturally. Plus Fish Tank has a bucket hanging out fairly regularly. I also (I think) flubbed baking Randy's recipe Number 1 (for low Ph) so I've been chasing Alk for a while among my other stuff and while it's easy to make, I've just decided to eliminate a variable (me) and buy the Tropic Marin full balling salts. Part of the reasoning with full Balling is you dose for chemical #3 all the trace elements of sea salt without the NaCL and do fewer water changes. This accounts for the NaCL that results with combining the alk and ca in the tank and adds in all the other stuff (trace elements etc) from sea salt that usually are replenished when you do a water change. So my new take is this: Stop changing water so much. I"ll dose the balling method with the TM 3 part chemicals for a while. We'll see how this turns out.
If I'm doing a 25% pwc on my 56 volume tank every week using Red Sea Coral Pro Salt, do I need to even dose at all? By the end of the week, my calcium is a bit lower than I'd like (400) but that's it. Alkalinity stays in the preferred range. Not sure about magnesium since I've never tested for it. I only have 2 sps Corals (birdsnest which is thriving and monti that is doing well).
Looks like a weekly manual dose of Ca would be fine. If you have a greater demand with the bioload you may need to start regular dosing if your water changes can't keep the chemistry right.
