alk and mag very low !

[bonomo53]

ok so i just picked up some new tests kits today after being lazy for the past few months and my mag and alk and very low and cal is a little high i haven't dosed anything in my tank.. it is mostly sps still frags tho my mag is 1000 alk is 4.5 and cal is 480 i picked up some alkaline8.3 and magnesion. The alkaline8.3 says to dose the max of 5ml per 10 gallon should i do this or should i just dose the mag and see if that helps the alk and ca stabilize

 

[mbg75]

I would do a water change first. A salt with good numbers like ESV or red sea coral pro.
Coral pro mixes with an Alk of 12

Sent from my ADR6300 using Tapatalk

 

[bonomo53]

i did a water change around an hour ago measure the levels of the newly mixed salt was ca 460 alk 7 mg 1200 im using coral life salt

 

[rickytsui]

after the water change wait a hr and test your tank water and see whats your level if it still lil off u can use 2 parts to raise your alk ca and mag slowly

 

[Awibrandy]

Start by raising your Mag slowly, then test again. Once you have your Mag where you want it, you can then work on the Alk. I am actually working on this little issue currently.

My reef has arrived to the point of needing dosing, guess that is a good thing.

BTW, BRS has a nice calculator on their site that should help you figure out how much to dose of each element.

 

[Reefbustr]

I usd coralife salt for years and honestly it's great for fowlr tanks but not reefs.
I could not get the alk high enough either so I would switch like the others previously stated. Esv or aqua vitro is what I recommend. As far as mag I would dose a cap full of tech m once a week.

 

[ducati335i]

I use io reef crystals and dose alk in all tanks daily ,,, eventually I'll pick up a calc reactor for the big tank

 

[LongIslandAndy]

Hi Joe

I have been using Coralife salt since the eighties, it is a good salt for the money and it is also used in many LFS. We spoke yesterday, you need to add a two part product as your coral is growing and using your calcium. Your tank looks great, I have no idea why people are telling you to do water changes. Start dosing a two part product and add magnesium. DO NOT try and get these numbers up too quickly, you will screw the stability in the tank which you obviously have and then you will really have a problem

Have fun
Andy

 

[Reefbustr]

Not starting the age old argument about salts. But if you do stick with coralife you will have to dose often to keep your parameters where they should be. This is why I stopped using it because dosing was becoming a pita. I went with a salt that gives me a higher alk and use the ca reactor to stabilize.

You probably are getting a lot of corals to grow and soak up the essential elements causing your tank to have lower parameters. Dosing is the way to go unless you decide to switch up salts .

 

[bonomo53]

ok thanks guys?knew this would happen sooner or later when i stock my tank full of sps frags just confused why my cal is high and alk is low.. if i pick up brs 2 part can i just dose the alk part since my calcium is pretty high already or do i need to dose in equal parts?

 

[Reefbustr]

You can just dose alk but remember
To Check your Cal !

 

[bonomo53]

okkk will dooo... how long should i wait to test after i dose

 

[Reefbustr]

Most likely in 24 hrs would give you a good idea of how much is being added. On my 155g and 180g with 30g sump every capful of esv bionic alk gave me a result of aprox .5 dkh. And like others have stated raise it up slowly. Possibly a capful a day and check. You will also have to figure out how much is being used up by the corals.

 

[mbg75]

Only reason I said to do water change is because the cal to Alk ratio was out of whack. Water change should bring them closer together, otherwise when you add Alk, it might precip out and look like snow in the tank.
But I could be wrong.

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[Awibrandy]

Excerpt from: http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-05/rhf/index.php which I feel may help you to understand the job of magnesium as a "Parameter" in a reef a little better. If you read the whole article you will get a better grasp of all of them.
I know it helped me a great deal!:shhh:

Magnesium

Magnesium's primary importance is its interaction with the calcium and alkalinity balance in reef aquaria. Seawater and reef aquarium water are always supersaturated with calcium carbonate. That is, the solution's calcium and carbonate levels exceed the amount that the water can hold at equilibrium. How can that be? Magnesium is a big part of the answer. Whenever calcium carbonate begins to precipitate, magnesium binds to the growing surface of the calcium carbonate crystals. The magnesium effectively clogs the crystals' surface so that they no longer look like calcium carbonate, making them unable to attract more calcium and carbonate, so the precipitation stops. Without the magnesium, the abiotic (nonbiological) precipitation of calcium carbonate would likely increase enough to prohibit the maintenance of calcium and alkalinity at natural levels.

For this reason, I suggest targeting the natural seawater concentration of magnesium: ~1285 ppm. For practical purposes, 1250-1350 ppm is fine, and levels slightly outside that range (1200-1400 ppm) are also likely acceptable. I would not suggest raising magnesium by more than 100 ppm per day, in case the magnesium supplement contains impurities. If you need to raise it by several hundred ppm, spreading the addition over several days will allow you to more accurately reach the target concentration, and might possibly allow the aquarium to handle any impurities that the supplement contains.

 

[bonomo53]

ok so i started to bring my alk up slowly the past week with bright well alkaline 8.3 ..Today my 3 part from bulk reef supply arrived. My current levels are ca 480 alk 6.7dkh and mg 1250.
After reading the instructions on my new 3 part kit it says to only dose alk and cal until i'am done with the 1 gallon mix of each then to dose 20 ml of mag. why is this? is this the right thing to do?
Heres the instructions http://www.bulkreefsupply.com/store/Instructions-for-Prepackaged-Kits-Recipe-1

 

[LongIslandAndy]

ok so i started to bring my alk up slowly the past week with bright well alkaline 8.3 ..Today my 3 part from bulk reef supply arrived. My current levels are ca 480 alk 6.7dkh and mg 1250.
After reading the instructions on my new 3 part kit it says to only dose alk and cal until i'am done with the 1 gallon mix of each then to dose 20 ml of mag. why is this? is this the right thing to do?
Heres the instructions http://www.bulkreefsupply.com/store/Instructions-for-Prepackaged-Kits-Recipe-1

Joe, it is not 20ml of magnesium it is 20 ounces of Mag for every gallon of Alk and Cal. You can also does 10 ounces of Mag when the Cal and Alk gallons are half gone if you want to split up the dose. :smash:

 

[bonomo53]

haha oops read it wrong thanks andy .. so is there a reason to dose the mag all at once?

 

[Chris Jury]

haha oops read it wrong thanks andy .. so is there a reason to dose the mag all at once?

Nope, you can dose each as often as you like to keep the numbers you want. If you dose cal/alk daily you can do the same with the appropriate amount of Mg. Since there is so much Mg in sea water, and it only gets sucked out slowly by critters (mostly by coralline algae in reef tanks) it doesn't normally vary a whole lot relative to its concentration even if dosing is infrequent. Also, the 20 ou to 1 gal ratio is a rough estimate of the consumption the tank will use. If there is a lot more coralline algae growth than coral growth, you may need to dose more Mg, and vice versa. Even so, this should keep things pretty close.

cj