Dosing or buy Reef Ready Salt?

[fltekdiver]

I'm new to the hobby, and in the process of cycling a 180

I've heard a couple of friends say. They crashed their tanks dosing

When I start to stock corals, it will be easy stuff like LPS

I don't want anything that will be high maintenance until my tank stabilizes and I know more about the hobby. And have the experience

Is Reef Ready Salts ok for LPS ?

I currently use Instant Ocean, but the cheaper version, not the reef ready mix, because I figured it will be. Few months before adding LPS

Should I consider a dosing pump down the road?

What causes a tank to crash from dosing ? And what crashes, all the coral?

[blanden.adam]

So there are a few questions within your question that I think need addressing, let me know if I miss any of them.

1) Which reef salt should I use?

IMO, almost all of them are suitable for keeping a reef, and the decision regarding which one to use really comes down to cost, availability, and personal preference. Regular old IO that you are currently using is perfectly capable of supporting a reef. The Reef Crystals version (the "reef ready" salt I think you are referring to) has some EDTA, some extra organics, and allegedly some extra calcium and alk. Other brands use more alk and cal, some reportedly mix clearer, etc, but in the end, for the most part, I really don't think it matters what you use.

2) What is all this dosing business?

I'm glad you asked! As corals grow, they consume calcium and alkalinity and to a lesser extent magnesium, strontium, and other trace elements. We use a dosing scheme (typically either kalkwasser, 2-part, or a calcium reactor) to replenish primarily the calcium and alkalinity at the same rate the corals consume it to keep the levels in the tank constant. This is necessary for a number of reasons (pH stability, health of the corals, etc), but suffice it to say yes, at a certain point you will have to do it if your corals are stony get large enough, or maybe even just coralline algae will be enough to do it. When you start depends entirely upon how much water you change and how much your tank uses. When water changes can no longer keep up with the calcium and alkalinity demand, it's time to start dosing :)

There are other kinds of dosing (e.g. vodka dosing, zeoVit, etc), but you should stay away from them until you've got the basics down pat.

3) But my friends crashed their tanks dosing, how did that happen?

It all depends on what they were dosing. If they were dosing calcium and alkalinity (either kalkwasser, 2-part, or calcium reactor), the crash was probably caused by an overdose leading to various effects based on which one it was. If they were dosing organic carbon, again probably crashed because of overdose, but also could be because of an underlying instability in another parameter that sent the tank into a tail spin. The moral of the story is, if you don't take precautions to protect yourself from accidentally overdosing, you try and change to quickly, or you don't test, test, and test, test, and test again while dosing, it is possible to crash your tank. Start low, go slow, build in multiple fail-safes, and test test test and you should be fine.

4) What does a tank crash mean?

This could mean different things to different people, but a common definition is a large die-off of livestock (corals, fish, etc) that prompts the teardown of a tank.

Did I hit all of them or am I off point?

[fltekdiver]

Man thanks !

I couldn't imagine loosing a tank in a tailspin, and yes, you hit it, I know a few that tore their tanks down and got out as fast as they got in, and others that downsized because of a crash

So when you say test, test, test

How often ?

I know I get lazy with my 120 I had, and was testing once a week before I did a water change

[bertoni]

If you dose just the basics of alkalinity and calcium, you'll probably need to measure and dose every day for a week or so, and then you'll be able to back off the testing to more like once a week or less frequently, depending on how often you add or remove stony corals from the tank. The tank might need some magnesium from time to time, but generally, checking once a month is fine for that.

[d2mini]

Two more things...

1) You might want to start with softies, not lps. LPS are still stony coral (Large Polyp Stony).

2) Never does anything without testing for it first. So start testing regularly, and when you see all, calc or mag drop below normal levels, that's when you know you need to start dosing.