I'm hoping to get a few things clarified from either Miami or Randy when it comes to using these recipes with Aquaforest products when using the sodium bicarbonate version of the above.
The recipe above for sodium bicarbonate (302grams in 1 US gallon) matches almost perfectly with Aquaforests recommendation for their
KH buffer (which is sodium bicarbonate) at 80g per liter (so 302.8gram). That's easy enough.
However things diverge dramatically at the calcium chloride instructions. Randy and Miami suggest 250 grams per US gallon,
whereas Aquaforest suggests 50g per liter, or 189.25 grams per US gallon. That's a difference of over 25%, yet both Randy and Aquaforest say their number should be dosed in a 1/1 ratio with the above identical sodium bicarbonate. How can that be?
The issue becomes more problematic when dealing with Part C (reef mineral salt) and trace elements. A
quaforest says to use 25g of reef mineral salt for every 50g of calcium chloride (effectively dosing it at 0.5X of calcium chloride). That would mean, if I use Randy's calcium calculation, I should use 125g per 1 US gallon. But Aquaforest says to use 25g per liter, or 94.6g per US. Gallon. 94.6g vs 125g is once again over 25% difference. Yet Randy also says in one of the above posts that you can use about the same amount of reef mineral salt as tropic marin part C, which is 91g. So how much should I use? the Aquaforest 94.6g or the 0.5X calcium concentration of 125g?
And this gets even more confusing when trying to use Aquaforest Component Strong A,B and C for trace element supplementation.
Aquaforest says "5 ml should be added to 1 litre of ready solution of calcium chloride", but that is presumably based on their 50g per liter (189.25g per gallon) calcium concentration mix. So should I use that or increase it by about 25%? And if I should increase that, should I also increase the amount added to the sodium bicarbonate, which is identical to what Randy and Miami recommend?
BTW, I would just use Tropic Marin Part C and Tropic Marin A and K instead, if only to not have to worry about this, but none of my LFSs are able to bring in Tropic Marin anymore and Aquaforest is pretty much the only game in town unless I want to order online, and very few online retailers in Canada stock the large volumes of Tropic marin products (and they tend to be far more expensive here to boot!)
Finally, if I want to add dry magnesium to the Part C/Reef mineral salt and I am adding approximately 205ml of magnesium per gallon of calcium used, does that equate to 69.6g of magnesium chloride and 6.7 grams of magnesium sulfate added to the reef mineral salt or did I calculate that incorrectly? Also, that is for the
BRS magnesium sulfate. I haven't found how much magnesium sulfate heptahydrate (epson salt) is required in weight, only in cups. Can you let me know how much the 3/4 of a cup of magnesium sulfate would be in grams in when using epsom salts?
