Aquaforest Components Strong C & K leftovers

[enzo]

Over the past couple of years I've gone through two boxes of Components Strong, with Strong C and K as left overs. But now I'm finding myself ready to buy my 3rd box of Components Strong. Im going through calcium and alkalinity and not much of magnesium and my parameters are very good. What am i to do with these left overs, also Aquaforest doesn't sell Component Strong as individuals, they only sell as package deal my lfs comes across the same issue. Is anyone else using Components Strong and having the same problem?

 

[Tastee]

It sounds like you aren’t dosing the 3 part in equal amounts so are using less of the component 3+ And 2+ than 1+. If so and you want to keep doing this then I don’t think you can do anything - as you said AquaForest doesn’t sell the components strong separately.

I initially found my Mg levels were high so dropped dosing 3+ a little. The tank did ok, no particular issues, but the Mg still stayed high. After 6 months however I went back to dosing all 3 parts the same and the Mg levels didn’t rise any further. Overall I felt the tank looked better after I went back to the AquaForest recommendation to dose all three parts equally. My tank has been running fine like this for 3 years now. Mg stays around the 1450 mark but that doesn’t cause any issues in my experience. All the research I did indicated the same - low Mg levels are a problem, higher levels are not an issue. Don’t forget each fluid has other trace elements than just the core ones so dosing less component 3+ doesn’t just dose less Mg it doses less of the trace elements that are in that fluid.

If you are dosing equally and still have your issue then you must not be mixing carefully enough, as 5 ml of each component strong goes into each fluid - 5 of A and B in 1+, 5 of K in 2+ and 5 of C in 3+. Each bottle is the same size so you will generate the same amount of each fluid.