Dosing Question

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elijones244

Premium Member
After getting a few more sps in my tank my alk dropped from 10 to 7, figured it was time to start dosing so I picked up B-Ionic. My question is, say my alk in the morning was 6, so I dose 23 ml, a little more then the recommended starting dose, and it shoots up, but later that day its back down to 7 does this mean I'm not dosing enough? I feel like if I dose too much more in the morning it might be way too high for a few hours following. I have been dosing the calcium part every few days because it stays around 460ppm that way, is it ok to do this or should I split it into smaller doses daily? Also I cant believe the corals like the alk to spike in the morning and lower throughout the day, wouldn't it almost be better not to dose because of the frequent change? If you dose by hand, whats your "schedule"?
 
Check out this calculator. Maybe it will help you.

http://reef.diesyst.com/flashcalc/flashcalc.html


David
 
How's your mg?

After MACNA I've decided to keep my alk around 7 and see how that goes for a while. Around 9-10 I started noticing my sand clumping.




Mike
 
@elijones244 wrote:
After getting a few more sps in my tank my alk dropped from 10 to 7 said:
This is the main reason why folks eventually move to dosing pumps - the dosing can be done automatically and in smaller doses, which minimizes the spikes. For Alk if you have to dose by hand, it is normally suggested to dose in the evening after your lights have turned off. Your water's pH normally drops at night (read this if you're bored :) - http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-09/rhf/index.php. It gives the scientific reasoning behind why pH changes from day to night), and dosing Alk causes a spike in pH, so the thinking is you're counteracting the drop in pH with the spike.

In reality however, it's very difficult to dose Alk in such a way that doesn't cause a pH spike. For example, in my setup I use dosing pumps that dose at a rate of 1.1ml per minute. Even this causes a 0.10 pH spike. The livestock gets used to it. :)

Regarding the size of your doses, if your Alk goes down to 7 (from 6) in less than a day, you are correct - you are not dosing enough to keep up with the demand of your tank. You need to either dose more in one sitting or dose twice a day. How big is your tank? To compare, I dose 82ml of Alk each day in my 90g.

My suggestion would be - figure out your daily Alk demand. Test your Alk twice, 24 hours apart and see what your Alk level does. If it drops then you're not dosing enough. If it rises, you're dosing too much. If you're not dosing enough, use the calculator that David referred to to see how much supplement you need to get a specific rise in Alk. You mentioned you use B-Ionic so make sure and select the specific type of B-Ionic supplement in the pull down. Use the number the calculator gives you to tweak your daily dose.

Once you've got the daily dose, you can fine tune your dosing by testing Alk twice several days apart. You can then tweak upwards/downwards as you need to.

Hope that helps!
Click to expand...
 
+1 to what Joel said. Try to figure out your total system water volume and measure your daily drop so you can calculate what you need. It will save time and help get you dialed in over trial and error and constant testing to see if you are at too much or too little.

I started with manual dosing and had issues with precipitation and buildup on my pumps even if I divided up my dosing and had big Alk swings and pH spikes. I tried manually dosing 4 times a day (when I woke up, before leaving for work, when I got home, and before I went to sleep) which got to be rather tedious. I now run dosing pumps that dose out equal amounts every hour during the course of the day, so 24 times separately. According to my Apex, I get a max pH swing of 0.11 between day and night and my Alk stays stable. I auto dose my Ca on the same schedule, 5 minutes after the Alk, and then Mg 12 times a day.
 
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