Two part pros advice lower or higher dosage

[bryan1354]

Alright, two part pros I need help. I have a 60 gallon frag tank with about 60 acro frags maybe 1"+ and 5 Acro colonies, some colony hammers, chalice etc..

I was originally dosing 100ml calcium & alk but my alk was sitting at around 6dkh daytime, 7dkh night/morning time.. cacium 450, Mag 1400, ph 8.3-8.4. I figured maybe I am dosing too much and its participating but then again I have tons of sps even tough there frags they could be sucking up that much alk. So I lowered my dosing via my reefkeeper to 60ml per day just right now but I'm wondering should have I of lowered or hired my dosage?

Thanks,

[bryan1354]

100 ml each

[downbeach]

What two part are you using? If your regular dosing was keeping up with your demand, but your alk was a little low, why not bump your alk to where you want it, and continue your normal dose.

[jerpa]

I would test the alkalinity daily. If it drops I would raise it back to the 100ml per day and then adjust it to the level you want with a series of one time adjustments. I would try to limit the changes to .5dKh a day. Without knowing what system you are using its hard to determine whether that is abnormal but a heavily stocked SPS will consume quite a bit. If you are not seeing signs of precipitation such as an off-white crusty buildup on pumps and heaters then I wouldn't worry too much.

[bertoni]

I agree with doing some daily testing for a bit. I also agree that it's wise to watch for signs of precipitation. Precipitation can happen inside pumps, as well as on visible surfaces.

[bryan1354]

i'm using brs two part recipe 1. No visible signs of participation. I think my problem was I was dosing in the sump. I have now moved my dosing lines to the display right in front of an mp10. I will be doing daily testing and see how it goes.

[bertoni]

Okay, that sounds like a good approach to me.

[bryan1354]

So I called BRS and they informed me to drop my dosage to 20ML each/ Day. Does that sound like the right thing to do?

I mean I do have about 50 sps frags and one big highlighter acro colony and maybe 5 mariculture colonies. I would assume that they would suck a lot of calcium and alk

[disc1]

So I called BRS and they informed me to drop my dosage to 20ML each/ Day. Does that sound like the right thing to do?

I mean I do have about 50 sps frags and one big highlighter acro colony and maybe 5 mariculture colonies. I would assume that they would suck a lot of calcium and alk

You still haven't told us how much alkalinity the tank consumes in a day. Nobody will ever be able to tell you if that is right or not without knowing how much you need.

It's like me asking will this size XL shirt fit me? The guy at the store I called says it will? But how can you ever answer that if you don't know how big a guy I am? I might need a S, or I might need a XXXXL. You need the information to answer.

What you need to do is test daily until you can figure out how much the alkalinity is falling per day. Then it is very simple math to figure out what the dosage needs to be. No guesswork and no multiple opinions. Just a simple number, plug it in and get an answer.

[disc1]

If you are not willing to do said testing and come back with numbers on consumption, then you should really stop wasting everyone's time asking them how much you should dose.

[bertoni]

Tanks vary quite a bit in their consumption rates. 20 ml per day might be fine for your system, but there's no way to be sure.

[bryan1354]

Wow take it easy man! 1.5 dkh is my daily consumption

[bryan1354]

Might be I'm going to dose 20ML each for a couple days and test accordingly.

[disc1]

According to the handy calculator at : http://reef.diesyst.com/chemcalc/chemcalc.html

I put in your 60 gallons, then put in current alk at 8 and desired at 9.5 to get what it takes to make a 1.5dkh bump every day. That came out to 64ml of Randy's recipe 1.

So you should be dosing at somewhere around 60ml per day. If your alk is still falling with that, then the dose would need to go up. If you are getting precipitation then you'll see it. Spread the doses out more if that's the case.

[Blueline12]

100ml's per day sounds pretty high. In my 180g I dose 35ml's each of ESV B-Ionic and I have around 70 frags/medium size colonies.

[downbeach]

100ml's per day sounds pretty high. In my 180g I dose 35ml's each of ESV B-Ionic and I have around 70 frags/medium size colonies.

Different water volumes, and different concentration for the two part. For instance, I have a 180, and use 120 mL daily of Randy's recipe #1, if I were to use ESV because it's about 35% more concentrated, I'd only need about 78 mL daily.

[Ron Reefman]

And I have a 180g & 70g tied together which is stuffed full of lps & sps corals and I dose 250ml a day of Randy's recipe #1

[bryan1354]

I did this last night. I tested for ALK and it was at 7dkh so I dosed 60ml of BRS recipe #1 (started at 9pm ended at 10pm). I tested a couple minutes after the dose and it was up to 8.4dkh. I set my reef keeper to dose 40ml over night in 8 separate doses and in the morning at 1130am I tested for my alkalinity again and it had dropped to 5.6dkh..

[bryan1354]

So, my alk dropped 3.4 dkh in the matter of 12 hours with a dose of 40ml huh.. I'm making this much more difficult for myself than it is. Should of stuck with kalk