OP
OP
Pau Hana Reefer
got reef?
Dosing Pump Set Up!
There is so much to learn in this hobby. If you're like me and spent significant time researching and learning before setting up your tank, adding your first fish or coral, making equipment purchases, etc... you find that there are still things that you completely missed. At the same time, you also realize that you may have bought equipment that either aren't needed (yet) or completely overkill for your needs. I have noticed many other fellow reefers do this and I have been guilty of this with a number of things as well.
One perfect example is the Bubble Magus BM-T11 dosing pump that I purchased back in December 2019 when my tank only had softies and LPS. After buying the pump and getting a gauge of my tank's daily alkalinity and calcium levels, I realized I could easily manage them simply with weekly water changes. Great, so the pump sat in the box as the warranty went to waste.
This changed this past fall when I noticed that my alkalinity and calcium were dropping faster than I could raise them with the weekly water changes. I started dosing BRS two-part (which I also purchased backed in December 2019) to maintain my alkalinity at 8.1 and calcium at 435. Last month, I started taking daily measurements of my tank's alkalinity and calcium to understand the daily intake in order to allow me to set up the dosing pump. There were days when I really wished I had an Apex and I burned through Hanna alkalinity test reagent.
This past week, I felt I had enough data to set up the pump. I put together a simple shelf using some scrap wood and mounted it in the stand. And tonight, I got the pump set-up and programmed. The BM-T11 was fairly straightforward to set up once you got past the instructions that were written in shaky, broken English. I had to do some googling to make sure I understood the directions. The hardest part was keeping the vinyl tubes from curling in the 1-gallon jugs, which I have sitting behind my sump.
Looking forward to seeing how this works out.
There is so much to learn in this hobby. If you're like me and spent significant time researching and learning before setting up your tank, adding your first fish or coral, making equipment purchases, etc... you find that there are still things that you completely missed. At the same time, you also realize that you may have bought equipment that either aren't needed (yet) or completely overkill for your needs. I have noticed many other fellow reefers do this and I have been guilty of this with a number of things as well.
One perfect example is the Bubble Magus BM-T11 dosing pump that I purchased back in December 2019 when my tank only had softies and LPS. After buying the pump and getting a gauge of my tank's daily alkalinity and calcium levels, I realized I could easily manage them simply with weekly water changes. Great, so the pump sat in the box as the warranty went to waste.
This changed this past fall when I noticed that my alkalinity and calcium were dropping faster than I could raise them with the weekly water changes. I started dosing BRS two-part (which I also purchased backed in December 2019) to maintain my alkalinity at 8.1 and calcium at 435. Last month, I started taking daily measurements of my tank's alkalinity and calcium to understand the daily intake in order to allow me to set up the dosing pump. There were days when I really wished I had an Apex and I burned through Hanna alkalinity test reagent.
This past week, I felt I had enough data to set up the pump. I put together a simple shelf using some scrap wood and mounted it in the stand. And tonight, I got the pump set-up and programmed. The BM-T11 was fairly straightforward to set up once you got past the instructions that were written in shaky, broken English. I had to do some googling to make sure I understood the directions. The hardest part was keeping the vinyl tubes from curling in the 1-gallon jugs, which I have sitting behind my sump.
Looking forward to seeing how this works out.
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. Keep us posted on what you think of those lights. They are supposed to be heavy. Curious to see what you think of them and how they perform. They should be awesome for real high power lighting.
