Long story short, I believe all I need to dose is alkalinity, but I have no experience with dosing aside from manually dosing phyto and aminos. I bought an automatic dosing pump, and I would like to set it up.
I wanted to see how much resources my tank used up over a period of two weeks, so I did a 50% water change, did baseline tests for Mag/Cal/Alk, waited two weeks and then redid the tests. Magnesium and Calcium didn't really get used up too much, which I guess is normal considering I only have a handful of SPS, the rest are LPS and soft coral. The one thing that did see the most significant usage was alkalinity. At the beginning my alkalinity was around 7.2 and when I tested everything today, it came back as 5.1. I was originally going to start dosing Kalk+2, but now I'm not sure that's what I need. I think all I need to dose is alkalinity.
I have a small tank, a 10G cube, which has I would say a decent amount of coral in it. Goniopora and zoanthids are definitely the majority, but I do have 6-7 SPS.
And if you're wondering why bother dosing at all on such a small tank when I could probably accomplish the same thing with water changes, that's true, but if I can just use an automatic doser and then do water changes like once a month instead of once a week or bi-weekly, I think that would be ideal. It would also give nitrates and phosphates a chance to increase a bit since I'm on the very low end for nutrient levels, like, near zero.
I don't think my tank uses up enough alkalinity for me to be able to get daily results to break it down easier, which is why I gave it two weeks. So now I'm hoping I can get some advice from the experts to finalize what I need to dose and how often.
Thank you for any and all assistance! If I missed any necessary information just let me know!
I wanted to see how much resources my tank used up over a period of two weeks, so I did a 50% water change, did baseline tests for Mag/Cal/Alk, waited two weeks and then redid the tests. Magnesium and Calcium didn't really get used up too much, which I guess is normal considering I only have a handful of SPS, the rest are LPS and soft coral. The one thing that did see the most significant usage was alkalinity. At the beginning my alkalinity was around 7.2 and when I tested everything today, it came back as 5.1. I was originally going to start dosing Kalk+2, but now I'm not sure that's what I need. I think all I need to dose is alkalinity.
I have a small tank, a 10G cube, which has I would say a decent amount of coral in it. Goniopora and zoanthids are definitely the majority, but I do have 6-7 SPS.
And if you're wondering why bother dosing at all on such a small tank when I could probably accomplish the same thing with water changes, that's true, but if I can just use an automatic doser and then do water changes like once a month instead of once a week or bi-weekly, I think that would be ideal. It would also give nitrates and phosphates a chance to increase a bit since I'm on the very low end for nutrient levels, like, near zero.
I don't think my tank uses up enough alkalinity for me to be able to get daily results to break it down easier, which is why I gave it two weeks. So now I'm hoping I can get some advice from the experts to finalize what I need to dose and how often.
Thank you for any and all assistance! If I missed any necessary information just let me know!