Dosing magnesium? Calcium?

I decided after my last post I wanted to raise my levels with the advice of a fellow reefer and a lot of reading. So after a week of slowly dosing calcium, alkalinity and magnesium, my levels are now right where I want them. Calcium:420 alkalinity : 8 and magnesium :1400. Now I just need to see how much my levels drop to see how much I need to add either daily or every few days. A dosing pump will come in the future when I upgrade but for now I'm manually dosing using brightwells magnesium and b-ionic two part to dose. Would dosing daily be much better then say every few days so there isn't such a swing? Also I've changed my water changes to bi weekly instead of weekly. My nitrates are damn near undetectable and the 10‰ change I do isn't really replenishing the trace elements I was looking for like I hoped. I'm hoping with this change I'll see some positive progress eventually.
 
Why would it lower it drastically if im dosing everyday? If I do a water change with my numbers right where I want them to be due to dosing everyday wouldn't it be the same as if I did a wc every week? I'd still only be doing a 10% wc be weekly.

Also no I didn't look into bulk reef supply dosing I went with bionic because that's what the fella I was dealing with used. So far so good.
 
You misunderstood me...I was saying if you dont dose everyday it will decrease the numbers since now you are doing bi weekly wc's

You could dose every couple days but you will still get unstable numbers throughout those days as it decreases...it would be more beneficial to dose everyday and dosing once every 3 or 4 days will require larger alk solution additions which will increase the ph a lot in one sitting
 
Ahhhh I Gotcha now Marinne. My bad. Yes your right. I was thinking everyday would be better as well. I feed my fish everyday anyways so it's not like it would be a hassle. Plus I'm assuming it would be a rather small dose everyday since it's only a 20 gallon. Maybe 4-6ml I'm guessing. Or hoping rather.
 
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I have a 29g cube and am going to start at like 3ml a day but I am not stocked much on coral yet

The soda ash will raise your ph around .02 every 1 ml so just do it super slow
 
Thanks for the tip marinne. But, I've been closely monitoring my pH and it had remained 8.0-8.2 so I have gotten lucky. Soda ash huh? Good to know. Ty .I know the brightwells magnesium I'm using raises 1 gallon by 26 ppm per 1 ml added. As for the bionic I'm not 100% sure. I don't have the original bottles. If memory serves me correctly it's 16ppm for calcium per gallon per ml and something like 0.75 for alkalinity per gallon per ml.
 
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Dosing is awesome. It is so easy to just let the tank run itself. Consistency is the best feature. It is nice to see even in a small tank needing dosing b/c w/c's aren't enough. I am currently dosing 100 mls of alk and 62 mls of cal per day to maintain. Do you run micro algae or heavy skimming?
 
No micro algae. But my protein skimmer is running 24/7 and it's a wet skim. . That's one thing I may do is decrease the amount of time my skimmer is running. I have a very light bio load with only two fish. That's a big dose Mario but I can totally see that in a larger tank. Now that I got he hang of it I really enjoy dosing. Even if it's manually. Kind of a good sign that we need to if you ask me. All that good stuff has to be going somewhere.
 
Right and this is my point. I would try dryer skimming and take your w/c longer. With the more frequent w/c and heavy skimming you may be pulling out part of your dosing. If you have a low nutrient system with small bioload, you're stripping your elements and not your waste. It is totally your tank but it is stated in brs 2 part dosing with frequent w/c will pull out more mag. I have yet used the mag in the 2 part dosing. Just giving you a little to think about.
 
No that's great. That was my initial purpose of doing a bi weekly w/c instead of weekly due to low nutrients. I mean what's the point of changing water when my Nitrates are like basically 0 and the w/c is doing nothing for my trace elements. I'm glad you said that it just made my thoughts more concrete. Initially I was under the impression keep the water as clean as possible as I think alot of people are told. but as I read more, fish poop is good for corals especially sps. To a certain extent. So I've been feeding my fish alot higher quality food and more frequently and thinking of leaving my skimmer off for the night maybe. As long as my Nitrates don't get too high should be all good I hope.
 
Yep, totally agree. There is not point on a w/c if your not changing anything. If an issue arises, that is what they are for. The mandatory 10% w/c is crap. If you clean your sand bed during the w/c I can understand. If alk, cal, and mag are where they are at you got this hobby nailed. I really don't think anybody test for trace elements, as they tend to not get depleted at any rapid rate. If all your annoying algae is at bay, open up your schedule w/c.
 
Leave your skimmer on 24/7. I read somewhere that skimmers take out 30% of doc, so what it is telling me in your system is low bioload and your natural filtration is keeping up great. Good job homeslice.
 
I only have like 5 corals and all are LPS...I tested today and I used .6 ALK, 20ppm calcium and my mag dropped around 10ppm all in just one week

my pumps are on the way, I have been monitoring and adding as needed...my tank is a month old and coraline is going crazy right now, prob because I am keeping all my levels within range
 
I am getting the dosing pumps this week and going to start with 3ml a day of each...these are the codes I am using

Alk
Fallback OFF
OSC 000:00/000:40/119:45 Then ON
If Time 06:01 to 21:59 Then OFF
If PH > 08.20 Then OFF

This will give me .60ml of alk every 2 hours for 9 hours which totals 3ml (prob more like 3.4 with the 1.2ml pumps)...it will start at 10pm and end at 6am

Calcium
Fallback OFF
OSC 000:00/000:40/119:45 Then ON
If Time 15:01 to 06:59 Then OFF

This will give me the same .60ml every 2 hours from 7am to 3pm for the same 3ml total
 

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