Dosing properly?

[Fishinwall]

Randy Holmes-Farley

Randy. I need help with dosing. Attached are my test results.
I'm dosing B-Bionic two part by hand.
I started dosing 15ml of each in my 65gal

After Alk fluctuating and spiking up I skipped dosing Alk one night, back to it the next, then having to have to skip it again to keep it inline.

I dropped both down from 15 to 10 down to 5 ml of each each day.

Let me know your thoughts or if you need any more information.
I'd love to get a doser soon, because doing it by hand really stinks.
Thanks.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I'd try dosing both parts 1 mL each for several days and watch the trend, rather than correcting too soon.

 

[Fishinwall]

Ok thanks

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

You're welcome.

Let us know what happens!

 

[Fishinwall]

You're welcome.

Let us know what happens!

Randy Holmes-Farley. Ok here's what I have so far... Dosing 1 ml since the 17th. Low resolution

Not looking much different. I don't get it. Hope you do

 

[mike007]

I really suspect you alk.readings are correct. I can't see how they can change that much each day unless you are dosing in correctly. My suggestion is to not dose for 3days and retest and divide results by 3 and that will tell you what your daily consumption is .Then go to the reef calculator and determine how much to dose to maintain levels.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

You might back off to 0.5 mL of each every day, but basically it shows that your tank has fairly little demand at this point. The ups and downs are testing error, not actual changes.

 

[Fishinwall]

You might back off to 0.5 mL of each every day, but basically it shows that your tank has fairly little demand at this point. The ups and downs are testing error, not actual changes.

So should I be dosing at all then? I had originally thought that my tank would do fine with just water changes until I saw a significant drop, then start dosing.

But I could do .5 ml. It would actually be easier for me to measure than 1 ml.

Do I still need to test daily?

 

[Fishinwall]

I test at the same time daily too.

 

[mike007]

How do you know what you tank is consuming each day? Without doing the mentioned advise above you cannot just dose without knowing what your tank is consuming. Can you give us your test results nitrates, phosphates etc.?.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

If you need to dose very little, you can test less often than daily, and you can also dose less often than daily if that is easier for you.

But I see little reason for you to test every day, expect to help average out the random uncertainty of the kit itself. Calcium can probably be tested less than once a week. Alkalinity is the one to watch more closely.

 

[Fishinwall]

Great thanks

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

You're welcome.

Happy Reefing!