Let's talk dosing/dosers!

[Mark75]

As my 50g cube now has a few sps ,with more being added, I need to be ready for cal/alk consumption.

I know in a couple of days my 1" frags will turn into huge colonies so I am running out of time! [emoji16]

I am currently adding Kalk at saturation for all top off water through my ATO and maintaining cal-440 and alk 9. I am not testing or dosing for mag at this time.

Let me tell you guys my plan and we can discuss better options if any.

I plan to purchase 2 part from BRS, at least in the beginning. I don't think it will be a huge expense for my relatively small 50g. As I am more comfortable with dosing I my exlplore home remedies.

I plan on purchasing a Jebae 2 pump automated doser from Fish street. I am thrifty(cheap[emoji16]) and they get decent reviews.

My concerns are Mag., do I need to dose it? Should I go ahead and get the 4 pump doser? I also would like some feed back on if I should continue with adding Kalk to my top off water.

Discuss..........[emoji3]

 

[Ryan15236]

If you with the jebao doser you may want to use cee's approach. I believe he said he uses a more dilute concentration of calcium chloride and sodium bicarbonate to make up for any error in the calibration.

Personally I use a combination of kalk in ATO and manually add 2 part when needed. I like kalk because it seems to keep my pH up and really stable. When kalk can no longer keep up with consumption of the tank at a potency of about 2 tsp per gallon then I will probably get 2 of the BRS 1.1 ml pumps and run them through a tank controller while still maintaining kalk in ATO at previous potency. I am going with the BRS because they seem to be reliable and function well. If you don't have a tank controller I would get some automated pump whether it be the jebao or maybe a bubble magus. I can't recommend a certain one though as I have never used any of them but I can share with you my plans for how I want to dose my tank!

 

[Ryan15236]

BTW I wouldn't worry about having a pump head specifically devoted to magnesium. Testing weekly to every two weeks and making any adjustments should be sufficient. If you got the 4 head pump you could dose other things like amino acids and vitamins for your corals.

 

[CastAway]

Just a thought - I think experience with manual dosing is very valuable, before implementing any automation.

An analogy might be one relating to computers; for example, that knowing DOS might be a benefit when it comes to knowing Windows, or, knowing HTML might be an advantage when it comes to using some graphical based web site creation tool.

There is a $100.00 four head dosing pump out there btw.

 

[Mark75]

Just a thought - I think experience with manual dosing is very valuable, before implementing any automation.btw.

Good advice,..I will get the hang of dosing manually before complicating it with automation.

 

[cee]

Manual dosing is how I began but if you keep a SPS reef with more mature colonies you will reach a point where automation is almost mandatory unless you want to dose daily or more frequently. My mantra is to minimize the automation but also to keep the amount of required intervention to less than 2 hours per week. I just find the hobby more enjoyable when I can use my "hobby time" to just sit back and watch the tank rather than perform tests, calculate dosing requirements, mess with the equipment, worry about a stuck valve, etc.

Dave