ALL FOR REEF - should i add more?

[muffinmanX]

Hi Reefers,
I have been adding the self mix for the above into my tank.
Was battling cyano and bubble algae and hair algae and a few aiptasia all this while before auto dosing AFR

Everything seems to stabilise now and all that is left for me is to manually remove the above algae and they dont seem to spread fast anymore.

Should i bump up the AFR? currently dosing 60ml per day as i think my calcium is a bit low. corals seem happy

current parameter:
Calcium : 320
magnesium : 1110
dKH : 10
nitrite : 0
nitrate : 5
ammonia : 0
phosphate : 0

 

[Ef4life]

If your levels are staying stable at that doseage, I don’t think you need to dose more afr, imo your alkalinity is on the higher side but fine. Calcium is pretty low. What test kits do you use?

what levels does your salt mix have for alk/ca/mg? Hopefully your using a mix that has nearly the level you want to keep in your reef. If so a good sized water change can bring parameters back in check on smaller tanks. Larger tanks could still benefit from a large waterchange, or a few to get stuff back in line and for regular maintenance, but It will be more cost effective for raising your levels to dose some calcium alone to get it where you want it than large water changes.

edit - the magnesium is on the lower side too, bumping that up can help your calcium levels too.

 

[muffinmanX]

If your levels are staying stable at that doseage, I don’t think you need to dose more afr, imo your alkalinity is on the higher side but fine. Calcium is pretty low. What test kits do you use?

what levels does your salt mix have for alk/ca/mg? Hopefully your using a mix that has nearly the level you want to keep in your reef. If so a good sized water change can bring parameters back in check on smaller tanks. Larger tanks could still benefit from a large waterchange, or a few to get stuff back in line and for regular maintenance, but It will be more cost effective for raising your levels to dose some calcium alone to get it where you want it than large water changes.

edit - the magnesium is on the lower side too, bumping that up can help your calcium levels too.

i use tropic marine for KH
nyos for magnesium
and api for calcium

YA the KH is my controlling point for all.

this is the parameter of the salt that i am using. i do my water change like 5% - 10% every 2 weeks.

Parameters	Level	Range	Units
pH	8.3	8.2-8.4
dKH	9.3	8.7-9.8
Calcium (Ca2+)	440	430-460	mg/l
Magnesium (Mg2+)	1340	1300-1380	mg/l
Chloride (Cl-)	19550	19960-20130	mg/l
Potassium (K+)	410	380-420	mg/l

 

[attiland]

i use tropic marine for KH
nyos for magnesium
and api for calcium

YA the KH is my controlling point for all.

this is the parameter of the salt that i am using. i do my water change like 5% - 10% every 2 weeks.

Parameters	Level	Range	Units
pH	8.3	8.2-8.4
dKH	9.3	8.7-9.8
Calcium (Ca2+)	440	430-460	mg/l
Magnesium (Mg2+)	1340	1300-1380	mg/l
Chloride (Cl-)	19550	19960-20130	mg/l
Potassium (K+)	410	380-420	mg/l

I would add a one of calcium solution to put it right as your alkalinity shouldn’t reall be higher. If it goes down after you may need to dose next to AFR regularly.

 

[muffinmanX]

I would add a one of calcium solution to put it right as your alkalinity shouldn’t reall be higher. If it goes down after you may need to dose next to AFR regularly.

lol i thought AFR is meant to hit everything spot on. i dont even have other sps apart from the birds nest.. lol

thanks for the input tho.. may need to combine one more kamoer dosing

 

[Ef4life]

Afr does handle everything, but stuff isn’t always so black and white with even rates of consumption. So single part dosing on occasion to bring it in line may be needed. You wouldn’t need a dosing pump, just find a dose calculator for whatever you use, dose a small amount daily to bring it up slowly over a few days.

I would get a different test than api for your calcium. They aren’t known for accuracy.

the other thing is you don’t need to stress about numbers being exactly something some random person on the internet says, you want stability and consistency in your numbers, and then you have to be reasonable with your test results. Lots of Test kits aren’t super accurate and have a lot of guesstimating by the end user.

 

[attiland]

lol i thought AFR is meant to hit everything spot on. i dont even have other sps apart from the birds nest.. lol

thanks for the input tho.. may need to combine one more kamoer dosing

Should but in my case it isn’t. I set AFR dosing to calcium consumption. I have to dose mg and alk on the top of that.
this is what works for me anyway to keep nice horizontal line in all 3 elements.
I think this is due to not many corals and thic layer of coralline that AFR not doing it right for me. Calcium would go too high if I would do in other way.
I do use Kamoer F4 and still have a head free.

 

[Reef.]

With AFR you are only meant to add it once your parameters are stable, you are not meant to use it to increase your parameters.
You judge how much to add by seeing how much alk your tank used in one day, if your calcium is low then you should correct that with a different product not AFR.

 

[burningmime]

When dosing AFR, you should use calcium as your baseline measurement. AFR uses Calcium Formate, which is broken down by microbes into alkalinity over several hours/days and could be taken up by corals before it ever shows up on a test kit. Because of this, alk readings can be off or take a long time to adjust.

 

[attiland]

With AFR you are only meant to add it once your parameters are stable, you are not meant to use it to increase your parameters.
You judge how much to add by seeing how much alk your tank used in one day, if your calcium is low then you should correct that with a different product not AFR.

That is correct. Set the levels and maintain the levels with AFR + supplement only if required

 

[muffinmanX]

When dosing AFR, you should use calcium as your baseline measurement. AFR uses Calcium Formate, which is broken down by microbes into alkalinity over several hours/days and could be taken up by corals before it ever shows up on a test kit. Because of this, alk readings can be off or take a long time to adjust.

if thats the case.. ill have to dose quite abit to max out the Ca.
but then my kH may hit the roof and ill have to dose something to reduce the kH?

 

[muffinmanX]

With AFR you are only meant to add it once your parameters are stable, you are not meant to use it to increase your parameters.
You judge how much to add by seeing how much alk your tank used in one day, if your calcium is low then you should correct that with a different product not AFR.

thank you!

 

[Acros]

Make sure your phosphates remain detectable, or else you will run into dinos. AFR will reduce your phosphates and nitrates.

 

[burningmime]

API is um

if thats the case.. ill have to dose quite abit to max out the Ca.
but then my kH may hit the roof and ill have to dose something to reduce the kH?

I'd grab a better test kit than API; your calcium might actually be just fine and the problem is the test kit. You can probably just bring a sample of your water to a local reefer or LFS and they'll test your calcium for free to see if it's a test kit problem. If the calcium is low on a different test kit, then for sure use calcium supplements to bring it back up then AFR to maintain stability.

EDIT: If you really want to geek out...


EDIT 2: They suggest Red Sea.