Need help dosing

I am new to this and was told I need to dose. I have seachem 2 part calcium and alkalinity. And I have seachem magnesium that looks like salt. Can someone tell me how to start dosing without killing everything? And also I would like to know how to keep dosing weekly or daily schedule without over doing it? I have test kits for all 3. I have 1 sps, and the rest are zoas, and a Fiji yellow leather.
 
Add 2 part 2 times a day till your levels are up. Maybe start with a little mag at first then some more mag after alk and cal is up. Then monitor daily and dose as needed after a while you will see how much to dose.


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@Matthew.yowell wrote:
Magnesium is at 1200. Alkalinity at 7 Calcium is around 380-400 said:
Generally, you want your Mg at 3x your target Ca level. So if you want a Ca level of 450 ppm you'll want your Mg at 1350 or a little higher. High magnesium levels can be harmful to snails. You'll want to take your Mg salts and mix it up into a solution before adding it.

Raise your Magnesium to your target levels first as that is what helps keep the Alk & Ca from precipitating out. Give it 12 -24 hours after dosing to verify levels.

Do not try to raise your parameters too quickly (mainly Alk as that can cause a pH spike). The general rule of thumb is 100ppm of Mag daily, 0.5 dKH of Alk is safe although I've raised Mg by up to 300ppm in one day without an issue (so long as salinity is kept stable, see below). I''m not sure I've seen a guideline on how much to raise Ca at once but I would think 25 - 50 ppm a day would be safe.

Then, as Eckolancer said, monitor your daily consumption and dose accordingly. If the changes are too small to note on a daily basis, wait about 3 - 7 days without dosing that particular parameter and divide by the number of days to get your daily dosing rate.

If you find you are dosing a lot, you will want to make sure you monitor salinity and keep up with water changes as a lot of solutions will raise your salinity as you go. I think most Mg solutions are salt based as well as a bunch of the calcium supplements.
 
Anytime. If you have a larger system or one that consumes a lot of supplements you'll want to take a look at getting an automated dosing system to help spread doses out throughout the day too. It will definitely help with keeping parameters stable. A lot of people prefer to dose their Alk at night to compensate for pH drops at night too. The last few things I can think of are to not dose your Alk & Ca at the same time, try to space out the dosing of those two by a bit, and try to dose into a high flow area.
 
My first tank was around that size but I ended up packing a bunch of corals and had lots of coraline growth and ended up needing a lot. Coraline algae uses up a lot more than you would think so my answer is maybe depending on your consumption. Do you have the ability to break down the doses where you could possibly do one in the morning, one when you get home from work, and another before going to sleep? If so, you can probably get by with manual dosing although that gets old real fast. [smilie=smile.gif]
 
@Matthew.yowell wrote:
How do I figure out how much my tanks needs to be dosed said:
Once your alk and ca are at the recommended levels then dose recommended dosage per what bottle suggests , test levels 24 hours later if levels are higher or lower adjust dosage till you can keep ca and alk levels stable


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Dosing machines serve several purposes....

1) regular doses over a day in smaller quantities to keep levels constant.
2) no manual labor involved
3) reliable quantities and measurements


The most important is keeping levels steady. Spikes due to single or dual doses a day can have an effect on the corals depending on the size of the system and the coral itself. You should be fine with it until you add more corals. Once you get a full tank with growth going, consider a pump but until that point what you are doing should be fine. Just test on a regular basis.
 
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