Dosing.... Who doesn't?

[Duke4Life]

I run a calcium reactor and do water changes, not sure if the reactor counts as dosing or not, i guess it does since its adding ca, alk, and mg

Why a reactor instead of dosing?

 

[stylaster]

Tank size my total water volume is over 500g it would cost a fortune to dose it

 

[DeniseAndy]

I have ca rx for my 300g system and just water changes for my 40g and my picos (2 6g)

 

[MaiReef]

Tank size my total water volume is over 500g it would cost a fortune to dose it

I think would cost less to dose than to do water changes to replenish. I have done the math, unless you are using seawater. I am going to kalkwasser because of this.

 

[shoelaceike]

On my prior tanks, I didnt dose anything....I mainly had LPS with a bit of SPS. The corals were always healthy and colorfull but didnt grow much. LPS grows very slow anyway....My current tank has much more SPS so now I dose alk and cal by hand. I usually dose a few times a week. I dont get a doser as nearly every crash I have ever heard of was because of an overdose. I feed my fish everyday so dosing is not much different.

 

[StrangeDejavu]

On my prior tanks, I didnt dose anything....I mainly had LPS with a bit of SPS. The corals were always healthy and colorfull but didnt grow much. LPS grows very slow anyway....My current tank has much more SPS so now I dose alk and cal by hand. I usually dose a few times a week.

How is growth compared to before now that you're dosing? My Euphyllia look great but growth is very slow right but I don't dose anything either.

 

[stylaster]

I think would cost less to dose than to do water changes to replenish. I have done the math, unless you are using seawater. I am going to kalkwasser because of this.

Not that bad i only do a 55 gallon water change every 3 months

 

[shoelaceike]

How is growth compared to before now that you're dosing? My Euphyllia look great but growth is very slow right but I don't dose anything either.

No difference on LPS

 

[TomToro]

I don't dose anything in the 240. Also switched from Oceanic then RC and finally use IO and do once a month 100gallon water changes. I'm growing softies, anemones, lps and some easy sps corals (pocillapora,etc). I don't need the coralline buildup and the tangs and pellet reactor keep algae at bay. I don't feed the inverts except what they catch in fish food and uh fish byproducts.

I think the best thing I've done is the pellet reactor. I feed heavily and it's handling it. I have a 1400 etss skimmer, run by a panworld 250 that takes about 8 gallons of sludge out a month (I empty the bucket twice). I took down my kalk reactor, UV light, 4 point doser and simplified the system. I do worry about old tank syndrome and might slowly start to swap out small sections of dry LR for the old wet stuff in the sump that might be getting clogged, but not enough to start a spike.