Calcium and Alk Dosing for LPS and Softies

[tottiforever]

Hello!

I have a system with 90 total gallons and about 10 very small soft and LPS corals

I just asked my LFS to set my Neptune doser up, and I’m curious as to what folks recommend I do for settings.

Currently only dosing 2 ml of the both BRS Calcium Chloride mix and 2 ml of BRS Soda Ash mix (mixed with a gallon of RODI each) total over 24 hours. Alk held steady at 8.2 over the week, but calcium dropped from about 400 to 325.

Any recommendations for new, more consistent settings for calcium? I can obviously boost the calcium this evening by 50 ppm using the BRS calculator, but I would love to know if other folks think I’m on the right track or if there’s more consistent methodology.

Thank you! You all have been unbelievably helpful.

 

[blaxsun]

First I'd ask what you're using to test. It seems strange that calcium would drop by -75ppm over a few days just for soft and LPS (I have a fairly heavily stocked 160-gallon and if I skip a day of dosing I'll maybe see a ±2-3ppm change).

 

[tottiforever]

First I'd ask what you're using to test. It seems strange that calcium would drop by -75ppm over a few days just for soft and LPS (I have a fairly heavily stocked 160-gallon and if I skip a day of dosing I'll maybe see a ±2-3ppm change).

Good to know. Red Sea’s Pro Calcium test.

Entirely possible I was mistaken on the first go around. Titration was something of a new concept.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Currently only dosing 2 ml of the both BRS Calcium Chloride mix and 2 ml of BRS Soda Ash mix (mixed with a gallon of RODI each) total over 24 hours. Alk held steady at 8.2 over the week, but calcium dropped from about 400 to 325.

That's not possible unless you dosed high amounts of alk and no calcium. To consume 75 ppm of calcium will consume about 11 dKH of alkalinity. There's no other way for calcium to decline than as precipitated calcium carbonate.

So I'd focus on testing, not dosing.