Dosing

[Aaron88]

So I ran out of my cal alk and mag and was out for about a week while I was awaiting delivery of my replacement. My Ca dropped down to 315 and my mag is 1300. What is the best way to get these up? I know I dint wanna do it all at once. But I also don’t wanna be behind the 8 ball for the next month trying to catch up. Thanks.

 

[AllSignsPointToFish]

You can raise each by 10-20 ppm per day, and I think things will be fine. In my tank, calcium and magnesium swings are much less disruptive than deviations in alkalinity.

 

[Vinman]

So I ran out of my cal alk and mag and was out for about a week while I was awaiting delivery of my replacement. My Ca dropped down to 315 and my mag is 1300. What is the best way to get these up? I know I dint wanna do it all at once. But I also don’t wanna be behind the 8 ball for the next month trying to catch up. Thanks.

I ran out one time and then I remembered I can do water changes to bring my levels up while I was waiting you could start with a 30% water change do a perimeter check then start dosing do another test a day later slowly building up

 

[AllSignsPointToFish]

I must apologize for not answering your question directly in my first response. Water changes are a great place to start. You can also purchase calcium and magnesium chloride solutions and add those in measured amounts to raise these levels. Kent has calcium and magnesium supplements available at a reasonable cost to start with.

If you're more ambitious, you can get some calcium and magnesium chloride and make your own solutions with deionized water

 

[Aaron88]

I must apologize for not answering your question directly in my first response. Water changes are a great place to start. You can also purchase calcium and magnesium chloride solutions and add those in measured amounts to raise these levels. Kent has calcium and magnesium supplements available at a reasonable cost to start with.

If you're more ambitious, you can get some calcium and magnesium chloride and make your own solutions with deionized water

I get the BRS stuff it’s affordable and affective. I just need a water change 3 days ago. And with my tank still being kind of young I don’t wanna strip it of good bacterium by doing a lot of water changes. I think I’m gonna slowly bring up my parameters and in a week and half do a water change and hopefully that will get me back to normal.

 

[AllSignsPointToFish]

The bacteria primarily live in/on the substrates in the tank, not in the water column. Water changes have a negligible effect on bacterial populations, so go for it if you want to!

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Did they all run out at the same time? If so, calcium was either low to begin with, or may be a test error. It can’t drop to that level from normal seawater values of calcium and alk just by dosing nothing.