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pugmommie
12/31/2008, 04:34 PM
I was doing some research on calcium/alk and am trying to decide what to use.
It seems that c-balance is a good product but I thought the 2 part from bulk reef supply might be more cost effective.

I was reading the directions for recipe 1 and got a little confused:confused:

This is how I understood it - You mix a gal of calcium, a gal of alk, and 20 oz of mag.

Then you figure out your daily dose level for the calcium and alk and dose them seperate. You do this daily until the whole gal of each is gone then you add the mag(20 oz) all at once.

So why do you dose the mag after the fact when with the c-balance the mag is already in it?

mnml
12/31/2008, 04:51 PM
this was confusing me as well when i first started using the DIY 2 parts. what i did was figure out the daily/weekly consumption rate of my mag and dose accordingly, same routine as my alk/ca.

pugmommie
12/31/2008, 05:13 PM
Ok, but I'm still confused. Can you guys give me some examples? I need all the help I can get.

192clark
12/31/2008, 06:04 PM
You should test the Mag and use the reef chemistry calculator to tell you what to dose. Those figures given are a good guide line but if I remember correctly in the reef chemistry articles it says to add 2.5 cups of the mag supplement after dosing 1 gal of both alk and ca. Testing is essential to maintaining the correct MG. If the MG is at 1350-1450 then your CA and ALK levels will be much more stable.

qfrisco
12/31/2008, 06:46 PM
The part about Mag confused me as well, and I e-mailed Ryan Batcheller at Bulk Reef Supply to clarify. He said, yes, you do dump the entire batch of Mag in after you have consumed the entire gallon of Ca and Alk. They recommend this because it is simpler. He said you could dose Mag at regular intervals if you prefer, but that your Mag typically drops so slowly they think it's simpler to just wait until after you've gone through the entire gallons.

mnml
12/31/2008, 06:58 PM
i'd like to also add that i dose my Mg at regular intervals since i only dose 25ml of alk/ca a day. at this slow rate, it takes me awhile to finish a gallon.

like 192clark mentioned, use the reef chemistry calculator to help with your consumption rate and how much to dose to achieve the levels you desire.

pugmommie
12/31/2008, 08:08 PM
thin crust - That's why I was confused, because if it takes awhile to use up the alk/ca then you could go quite a while and not add any mag.
I think it's getting alittle clearer for me....I think

SaltyDr
12/31/2008, 08:54 PM
I takes a lot of mag to significantly change your mag level, so dumping it in all at once won't change it that much. I prefer to periodically add my mag. I'll look and see that I've use like 1/4 of the Ca/alk and I'll add 1/4 of my mag. My thoughts are if you dump in all of the mag and then shortly after do a water change, you could potentially loose some of the "extra" mag. But again, it takes a lot of mag to change the levels so in reality it shouldn't matter much either way.