Water Parameters for my 20 litre tank.

Pontuskor · Aug 16, 2024

I have just started to dosing my tank but I do not know how to figure out my daily levels needed to maintain and how to raise my levels.

My targets are
KH : 8
Mag : 1500
Cal : 460

I started dosing on August 12th and my levels were
KH : 6.7
Mag : 1410
Cal : 430

I dosed Red Sea
A Calcium 2ml
B Alkalinity 2.2ml
C Magnesium 4ml

The next day my level were
KH : 7
Mag : 1410
Cal : 480

This is when I stopped Dosing Calcium and it levelled out at 480 from the 12 to today.
My Mag I continued to dose 4ml and it stays at 1410 so yesterday I doubled the dose and today it is at 1470.
For KH it has been raising daily but then I still don't know the maintenance level.

1st question is I don't understand why my calcium is not being used up by my corals at all?
2nd question is My Mag maintenance should be 4ml but why when I dose 8ml it went up to 1470 instead to 1430.
3rd question For dosing maintenance I should be checking each day and getting the daily need to just auto dose daily and test weekly right?

Thank you for your help

Randy Holmes-Farley · Aug 16, 2024

Which exact Red Sea products are you using?

I'd stop dosing the magnesium for now. The test may not be accurate, but if so, its plenty high. 1500 ppm magnesium goal is way, way high. Not really a fan of that extreme magnesium trend. The ocean averages below 1300 ppm. Don't believe some of the claims such as it eliminates algae.

Day to day testing of magnesium is useless. From consumption, it will never move in a detectable way with any method any reefer uses. Once a week is more than enough. Never might be the best magnesium testing plan. If you really know you want 1500 ppm, just dose it there and stop testing after that.

Just say NO to magnesium testing: RMM is born

OK, this thread has been many years in the making, and I'm posting it here since folks in the chem forum are probably already tired of all the threads relating to problematic magnesium testing. I'm going to propose a method, let's call it the Randy Magnesium Method, or RMM for short. All good...

www.reef2reef.com

For alk and calcium, I recommend dosing both based on alkalinity and the expected demand for calcium based on the alk needs, and then adjust calcium dosing slowly up or down as needed in the long term to keep you where you want.

Right now, the 2 ml of alk seems fine and on track to rise a bit more (if accurate testing). Let's see where it stabilizes after a few days, and adjust accordingly. Then we can also figure out a calcium dose. Calcium is fine and makes no real difference anywhere in the 400-550 ppm range.

Pontuskor · Aug 26, 2024

Randy Holmes-Farley said:
Which exact Red Sea products are you using?

I'd stop dosing the magnesium for now. The test may not be accurate, but if so, its plenty high. 1500 ppm magnesium goal is way, way high. Not really a fan of that extreme magnesium trend. The ocean averages below 1300 ppm. Don't believe some of the claims such as it eliminates algae.

Day to day testing of magnesium is useless. From consumption, it will never move in a detectable way with any method any reefer uses. Once a week is more than enough. Never might be the best magnesium testing plan. If you really know you want 1500 ppm, just dose it there and stop testing after that.

Just say NO to magnesium testing: RMM is born

OK, this thread has been many years in the making, and I'm posting it here since folks in the chem forum are probably already tired of all the threads relating to problematic magnesium testing. I'm going to propose a method, let's call it the Randy Magnesium Method, or RMM for short. All good...

www.reef2reef.com

For alk and calcium, I recommend dosing both based on alkalinity and the expected demand for calcium based on the alk needs, and then adjust calcium dosing slowly up or down as needed in the long term to keep you where you want.

Right now, the 2 ml of alk seems fine and on track to rise a bit more (if accurate testing). Let's see where it stabilizes after a few days, and adjust accordingly. Then we can also figure out a calcium dose. Calcium is fine and makes no real difference anywhere in the 400-550 ppm range.

Date	Sal (SG)	KH (DKH)	Mag (PPM)	Cal (PPM)	Phospate (PPM)	Nitrate (PPM)
8/19/2024	1.026	7.8	1470	480	0.12	15
8/26/2024	1.026	7.7	1560	500	0.21	23.8

I stopped dosing since my last test and these are my levels. I am finding it hard to understand how my mag and cal went up. What should I do to lower back the levels?

Also are my Phosphate and Nitrate level ok?
Last week I saw nitrate being too low at 15 so I fed my corals AB+ daily 0.8ml a day and fed some mysis shrimp every other day.

Randy Holmes-Farley · Aug 26, 2024

Pontuskor said:
Date Sal (SG) KH (DKH) Mag (PPM) Cal (PPM) Phospate (PPM) Nitrate (PPM)
8/19/2024 1.026 7.8 1470 480 0.12 15
8/26/2024 1.026 7.7 1560 500 0.21 23.8

I stopped dosing since my last test and these are my levels. I am finding it hard to understand how my mag and cal went up. What should I do to lower back the levels?

Also are my Phosphate and Nitrate level ok?
Last week I saw nitrate being too low at 15 so I fed my corals AB+ daily 0.8ml a day and fed some mysis shrimp every other day.

What you should do is stop measuring magnesium. That result is test error, and is the main reason to use this method:

Just say NO to magnesium testing: RMM is born

OK, this thread has been many years in the making, and I'm posting it here since folks in the chem forum are probably already tired of all the threads relating to problematic magnesium testing. I'm going to propose a method, let's call it the Randy Magnesium Method, or RMM for short. All good...

www.reef2reef.com

The calcium change is well within the variability of salinity and calcium testing results.