Dosing Calcium and Alkalinity

[AquaSump]

So i'm still a newbie (only had a tank for 4 months) and i'm starting to get a small collection of coral. I have some softies, LPS and SPS. I'm starting to read about dosing Calcium and Alkalinity. How important is this if i am doing a regual water change every 2-3 weeks? Also, i have been dosing Phytoplankton about a tablespoon every 2-3 days. is that enough? should i dose more? also, is there any advantages to dosing with a dosing pump vs. manually dosing? Ultimatly i want to give my coral every chance to grow as fast and healthy as possible.

Thanks in advance for the responses.

[mutateddogbone]

what you really need to do is buy some test kits, and test for calcium, alkalinity, and magnesium. once you know the uptake of the summplements by the corals, its easy to dose accordingly. regular water changes will help to replenish the trace elements along with Ca, ALK, and MG but those will be depleted in a few days if you have a lot of stony corals. you need to shoot for 3 stable levels of ~420 for Calcium, 9 DKH alkalinity, and 1350-1450 MG. all 3 of which needs to be in balance to have the fastest growth in your corals. I feel that Mg is a seriously neglected element when dosing in a reef tank. once it gets so far depleted, it takes a TON of supplementing to raise it back to where its supposed to be.

Mg helps keep Ca and ALK in suspension in your water, which makes you have to dose a little less to get the same results. low Mg will cause your supplements to precipitate, and unable to be used by your corals.

as far as dosing pumps go, its more of a luxury than a necessity. if you start cram packing SPS in your tank, and they start growing into colonies, you will need dosing pumps to keep up, but with a light load on CaCO3 producing corals in your tank its not an important expense ATM. Save the cash and buy more coral

[AquaSump]

GREAT INFO! so what about dosing with kalkwasser instead of dosing all three?

[mutateddogbone]

i would not mess with kalk unless you do a ton. and i mean A TON of reading. but you would still have to supplement Mg

[AquaSump]

so the best way to go is to test and dose calcium, alkalinity, and magnesium. are there any hidden things i should know about before i start dosing weekly? or is it just as simple as dosing and testing, then dosing some more?

[mutateddogbone]

set your doses small at first, and raise slightly if you test and are low, or lower if high etc. in most cases its better to be too low on something than too high. your best bet is to go head and get u some test kits and see where you are and go from there. after you figure out your maintenance dose, test every 2 weeks and see if you need to raise or lower the dose. it will take about a couple weeks or so to figure it out, but thats because you have to give it a bit of time to stabalize. just remember, low Mg will throw the other 2 out of proportion, since Mg helps your water to saturate Ca and ALK, so test for Mg and raise that to where it needs to be first, then figure out your Ca and Alk. that would be my suggestion but just my .02

[AquaSump]

thanks a TON for the help.