Baseline Parameters / Coral Growth / Dosing

[KeystoneMalone]

Hello reefers! Hope everyone and their families are doing well & enjoying the extra time with their reefs.

I have a few questions- going to try and keep it relatively painless

Quick facts about the tank in question:
-IM Nuvo 20
- Weekly 5 gal water change with 0.00 TDS water since the tank has been cycled (pretty strict about this, but it may be a day before or past a week here and there) I use aquaforest probiotic reef salt
- Daily dose of .5ml of Brightwell Coral Amino broadcast fed in tank
- Polyplab polypboost / reefroids target fed every other day.
- Redsea test kits
- Viparspectra light schedule - 3 hours blues / 3 hours whites / 3 hours blues all at around 25-30%

- was running chemipure blue for a while, but stopped 3 weeks ago as I wanted to see what effect it would have on my parameters. My nitrates have gone up a bit, but are now on the way back down- does anyone have any thoughts/ advice on constantly running media like this? does it make the water too "clean" for certain corals?

-(preface- I should have done more research first) - after my water test on 5/5/2020 I felt as though my calc/alk was a bit low, so I started dosing fusion 1 & 2 in amounts that I came up with using the dosing calc on their website. I was dosing every other day for the past week. Ive seen some people say that you're supposed to dose the same amount of both, but via the calc on their website I don't need equal amounts of both- any clarification there?

Test results as of 5/5/2020
Nitrate: LR: 4ppm / HR: 16ppm (hard time reading color of result)
Phos: 0.12 ppm
Alk: 6.4 dkh
Calc: 390 ppm
Mag: 1440 ppm

Test results as of 5/12/2020
Nitrate: LR: 4ppm / HR: 12ppm
Phos: .08-.12 ppm (hard time reading color of result)
Alk: 11.2 dkl
Calc: 400 ppm
Mag: 1400 ppm

Questions:

1) how do you establish baseline parameters for your reef to really see how much calc/alk your corals are using? I test once a week, but it seems as though numbers can jump around a little. Ive also never tested right after a WC to see what the numbers are once elements have been reintroduced through that.

2) provided the test results I came up with are reasonably correct, should I even be dosing 2 part?

-I don't have a ton of coral yet, just about 10 frags, a Kenya tree, and gsp. most of, if not all of my coral always opens up and looks healthy (with the exception of the occasional zoa staying closed for a day or so.) but im not seeing much growth at all from anything but the GSP. I have an Aussie goldeneye chalice that isn't doing to hot, its the only piece I have that is really struggling and has bleached a little since I got it. I have moved it to the floor of the tank to see if the change in lighting/flow helps.

Any thoughts, recommendations, comments would be greatly appreciated- sorry for the essay of a post.

Thanks!!

 

[Uncle99]

Alk is in the range but high IMO at 11.2, I would let that fall to 8.0-8.5 dkh.
If you alk is 11.2 after water change, and you want this high alk, then ok, but if you want lower, I think you need a salt which closer matches your parameters.

You only start dosing when your water changes can’t keep your chemistry in line and a STABLE.

So, do the water change, measure the Alk and CA.......then measure again in 24.....again in 24.....then that should show the daily consumption........if your using more than .5dkh daily, then yup, you need to dose. You want to keep that Alk number as stable as possible, but no more than . 5dkh change or you PO corals