How do I know how much I need to dose weekly/daily?

[jhoan]

Hey everyone, a couple questions I wanted to ask about how to dose, any help will be much appreciated


Parameters:
Nitrate 10
Alk 8.0
Mag 1215
Cal 385
Salinity 1.025


I do have lps and soft corals that have been doing well.

How do I know how much I need to dose weekly/daily?

For example, If my desired calcium level was 420, how much days would I divide the dosing into and how much would I dose a day to increase it safely?

I’m using bulk reef supply


Any additional tips please let me know!

 

[mcarroll]

In a nutshell, you need to accumulate a little more test data so you can calculate the tank's usage rate.

 

[EnterName]

Magnesium tests are prone to error so I would ignore them.
Calcium is okay-ish but still far less sensitive to consumption than alkalinity. So a titration-based alkalinity test is a good way to get an idea of the overall Ca/Mg/Alk consumption of your tank because they are all related to each other (for the most part).

The usual approach is to measure alkalinity on Day 1, then don't do any water changes or dose anything besides ATO water for a few days (sometimes one or two are enough) and measure alkalinity again.

Then calculate the daily consumption (difference measured divided by the number of days between tests), and then you know how much to dose

You will still need to track alkalinity to make sure everything is dialed in correctly, but once it's set up tests don't have to be that frequent anymore.

If you just want to increase your parameters once you can look at the "maximum recommended daily dosage" on the products you use and stay below it.