Dosing twice instead of once

[BudgetR33f]

Instead of dosing 2 ml of AFR at 8:30 pm, would dosing 1ml at 8:30 am and 1 ml at 8:30 pm make my tank more stable/better?

 

[KrisReef]

Great question, I don't know the actual answer regarding stability. I do know that a lot of folks dose in the evening various foods to feed the polyps and mouths after the lights go out, and the polyps start feeding. Not sure what the instructions on AFR suggest for dose timing? Bump

 

[Sophie"s mom]

I will be following! This is a solid question, that I too would like to know.

 

[Formulator]

What size tank or how much Alk raise does that equate to?

 

[BudgetR33f]

What size tank or how much Alk raise does that equate to?

20g and around .3 alk raise for 2ml (may be a little more or less, salifert alk is kind of hard to read imo)

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Instead of dosing 2 ml of AFR at 8:30 pm, would dosing 1ml at 8:30 am and 1 ml at 8:30 pm make my tank more stable/better?

It would likely make alk more stable, but that sounds like a very low dose unless the tank is very small, and likely will not result in any detectable difference in tank appearance.

You could always measure alk a few times over 24 h after the single dose to see what sort of alk change you are experiencing.

Nothing else in AFR will benefit from spread out dosing, IMO.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

Personally I do break it up into 4 doses per day since I do feel it gives better stability, but I'm dosing 42 ml per day. 2 ml per day for .3 alk increase/decrease per day is negligible so I would just keep it at one dosing to keep it simple. But can always split the dosing amounts later when your consumption is more.

 

[BudgetR33f]

I couple other forums on different websites say to split up dosing, but i would like to hear other opinions/experiences. I might just try it and see how it goes. I thought that corals take up more alk, calc, and mag while the lights are on which makes me a little worried to split up dosing earlier in the day.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I see the 0.3 dKH in your later post. I don’t think spread out dosing will be worth the added bother.

 

[BudgetR33f]

I guess I will just leave my dosing as it is then

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I couple other forums on different websites say to split up dosing, but i would like to hear other opinions/experiences. I might just try it and see how it goes. I thought that corals take up more alk, calc, and mag while the lights are on which makes me a little worried to split up dosing earlier in the day.

I’d be truly shocked if dosing 0.15 dKH twice a day was notably different from dosing 0.3 dKH once a day.

AFR already naturally spreads out the alk release anyway..

 

[landlubber]

So because i can, I remapped my dosing schedule between 4 solutions to the point where something doses every 5 1/2 minutes.
Is it more stable? i honestly didn't test a bulk dose vs incremental dosing ahead of time to determine that but i suspect outside of the peak consumption hours it does hold the average values more consistently.

 

[Formulator]

AFR already naturally spreads out the alk release anyway..

How does it do that?

 

[DanyL]

Calcium Formate (which AFR is based on) goes through bacterial processing to make the alkalinity available, which isn’t an immediate reaction as with many other methods, and why it takes time for it to appear after dosing.

 

[Formulator]

Calcium Formate (which AFR is based on) goes through bacterial processing to make the alkalinity available, which isn’t an immediate reaction as with many other methods, and why it takes time for it to appear after dosing.

Brilliant formulating! I love it.