chemicals when to add and what?

[Anonymous]

If I understand your post correctly you have nothing but LR in the tank so far. When I first set up my tank I was told to start dosing calcium from the beginning. I use Bionic.

Even without corals it might be good to dose calcium, and maybe iodine also, to stimulate coralline algae growth. Other than that it was good for me because I got in the habit of dosing before adding corals so I knew what I was doing by that time.

Of the subject: Since you have nothing but LR you might be interested in this. I read a good suggestion in The Reef Aquarium by Delbeek and Sprung. Before adding corals or fish you might consider trying to get an octopus on loan from a LFS. He will eat any undesirable crabs and the dreaded mantis shrimp if you got any in on your rock. With 180 pounds of rock, if you got a mantis shrimp you will have a tuff time getting him out. After a few days the octopus should have cleaned everything out and can easily be trapped and returned to the LFS.

Just a thought, wish I had this idea before, I spent a lot of hours trying to get a mantis out of a tank with only 50 pounds of rock.

 

[Anonymous]

Ive just started my first reef tank demensions are 48"x24"x24" 120gal. 180lbs of LR mixed marshall,pagu and figi. 3 inch sand bed aragamax. Berlin H.O skimmer ran by Rio 3100. 6 maxijet 900s hooked up to redsea wavemaker. 2 36"PCS and 4 48" atinic blue vhos. The tanks has been running for 1 week what supplements (calcium,iodine etc)should I add. Sorry for the long post thanks for listening!

 

[Anonymous]

Hey saltman, you obviously haven't been around here long, three lines ain't long

All you need to add is calcium and alkalinity. Those are the important ones. I suspect you are still within the initial cycling period, so you are better off doing some major water changes to keep the ammonia and nitrite levels down as much as possible. If you do that, then there is no need to worry about calcium and alkalinity yet. When you reach the end of the period of doing the large water changes, then start to add your additives.

There is nothing else you should add other than food, evaporation top up and light. Other elements may be used up, but the thing is you have no way of measuring their concentration so adding an additive for them is not a very good idea. How can you control the level of something when you don't know what that level is?

Best of luck with your new reef