My tank is almost 5 months old. I have some softies (zoas, GSP, mushrooms) and LPS (hammer, frammer, Duncan, candy canes, chalice, favias). I was dosing BRS Soda Ash daily with a pump to keep my alk around 7.5-8, and dosed a few times manually BRS Calcium to try to keep it around 430. I bought the BRS magnesium powder but never actually dosed it. An ICP test showed magnesium was a 1355 so I thought water changes were enough to keep it at healthy levels.
A few weeks ago, I heard about All-for-reef and I really liked the idea of having to dose just one solution, so I bought the 1000ml bottle. Since the last two weeks, I started dosing 18ml every day at nights and of course, stopped dosing BRS Soda Ash. My tank is 100g (already considering sand / rock displacement), so with a recommended initial dose of 5ml x 26gals, I was supposed to start with 19.2ml, so 18ml was well within the recommend dose.
It took a couple of days but was able to get consistent readings of 8.2-8.4 after I started dosing . All seemed OK for 2 weeks, but yesterday I noticed that one of my favias "defleated"/retracted all of the sudden. To my eye, it was just looking good the day before, but in less than 24 hours, it was not fluffy anymore.
Here's before (the picture is zoomed in, my coral is not that big)
And here's after
I ran as many tests as I could, and these are the results
Alkalinity 8.4 (Hannah)
Calcium 450 (RedSea)
Magnesium: 0.05ml left so I'm guesstimating 1420-1430 (Aquaforest)
Salinity 1.026
Temp 78
Ph 8
Phosphate 0.11
Nitrates 11
Although the numbers look good to me, I paniced, and I thought that All-for-reef caused this, because I had done nothing else to tank, so I decided to skip the 18ml dose yesterday. The coral looks the same today (bad), but what was even more puzzling, is that after testing for alkalinity I got a reading of 8.3. How is that possible? I've checked before, and my tank consumes about 0.4-0.5 dKh per day, so how is that I skipped a full 18ml dose, yet alkalinity remained practically the same?
I'm sharing all this to ask for advice regarding the use of All-for-reef in such a new tank. I have about 20 coral frags that barely cover some parts of my aquascape, 2 clownfish and a blue hippo tang.
I don't want to go back to 2 part dosing, but I wonder if dosing All-for-reef is adding more than my tank needs at this early stage. BTW, I took water samples and put an ICP test on the mail right away yesterday, because I really want to know whether something is wrong with my water chemistry, or simply I'm one of the unlucky ones that can't keep favias. I'll post the ICP results as soon as I get them.
Thanks in advance for your help!
A few weeks ago, I heard about All-for-reef and I really liked the idea of having to dose just one solution, so I bought the 1000ml bottle. Since the last two weeks, I started dosing 18ml every day at nights and of course, stopped dosing BRS Soda Ash. My tank is 100g (already considering sand / rock displacement), so with a recommended initial dose of 5ml x 26gals, I was supposed to start with 19.2ml, so 18ml was well within the recommend dose.
It took a couple of days but was able to get consistent readings of 8.2-8.4 after I started dosing . All seemed OK for 2 weeks, but yesterday I noticed that one of my favias "defleated"/retracted all of the sudden. To my eye, it was just looking good the day before, but in less than 24 hours, it was not fluffy anymore.
Here's before (the picture is zoomed in, my coral is not that big)
And here's after
I ran as many tests as I could, and these are the results
Alkalinity 8.4 (Hannah)
Calcium 450 (RedSea)
Magnesium: 0.05ml left so I'm guesstimating 1420-1430 (Aquaforest)
Salinity 1.026
Temp 78
Ph 8
Phosphate 0.11
Nitrates 11
Although the numbers look good to me, I paniced, and I thought that All-for-reef caused this, because I had done nothing else to tank, so I decided to skip the 18ml dose yesterday. The coral looks the same today (bad), but what was even more puzzling, is that after testing for alkalinity I got a reading of 8.3. How is that possible? I've checked before, and my tank consumes about 0.4-0.5 dKh per day, so how is that I skipped a full 18ml dose, yet alkalinity remained practically the same?
I'm sharing all this to ask for advice regarding the use of All-for-reef in such a new tank. I have about 20 coral frags that barely cover some parts of my aquascape, 2 clownfish and a blue hippo tang.
I don't want to go back to 2 part dosing, but I wonder if dosing All-for-reef is adding more than my tank needs at this early stage. BTW, I took water samples and put an ICP test on the mail right away yesterday, because I really want to know whether something is wrong with my water chemistry, or simply I'm one of the unlucky ones that can't keep favias. I'll post the ICP results as soon as I get them.
Thanks in advance for your help!