New to Dosing

Office_Reef · Mar 30, 2026

So my water levels last weekend were:
Alk 7.2kH
PH 7.9
Mg 1420
Ca 440
Phos 0.1
Nitrate 12

I have a redsea reefer max G2 200Litre (58 Gal) tank, 12 months in and have a 6 fish and a handful of SPS (BTA, Devils Hand, Goni, Zoas, etc.). I would like to introduce a couple of LPS - maybe two, nothing crazy.

I have started dosing to get better and stable parameters and I have a few questions:
1. Do I need to dose all 4 of the 4 part red sea dosing program? Will it throw things out of whack?
2. If I do all 4 will Mag and Ca go too high? Can it be too high?
3. Do I need to do an initial dose to get the Alk up to 8, or should I just do maintenance doses and regular water changes?

Thanks in Advance for any tips.

obanarama · Mar 31, 2026

1) Yes, you should dose all 4 parts at the ratios that the ReefBeat app recommends. In theory your parameters should not get thrown out of wack. But during the first few weeks you'll want to test very frequently until you get the feel for how much to dose. Additionally, since your Cal numbers are already good you likely won't need to dose much.
2) If you read the 4-part instructions you'll see that you base the dosing amounts on your calcium test results. For example, if you want your calcium to stay at 440 then you'd enter that into the ReefBeat app and it will tell you how much to dose: https://redseafish.com/article/reefdose-dose-calculator/
3) You shouldn't need an initial Alk dose to bring your Alk dose up. If you are dosing the fixed ratio amounts that the ReefBeat app is recommending then Alk will rise on its own. I found that Alk usually sat at about 9.0 while using the 4-part system.

Are you using the doser as well, or manually dosing?

Office_Reef · Mar 31, 2026

obanarama said:
1) Yes, you should dose all 4 parts at the ratios that the ReefBeat app recommends. In theory your parameters should not get thrown out of wack. But during the first few weeks you'll want to test very frequently until you get the feel for how much to dose. Additionally, since your Cal numbers are already good you likely won't need to dose much.
2) If you read the 4-part instructions you'll see that you base the dosing amounts on your calcium test results. For example, if you want your calcium to stay at 440 then you'd enter that into the ReefBeat app and it will tell you how much to dose: https://redseafish.com/article/reefdose-dose-calculator/
3) You shouldn't need an initial Alk dose to bring your Alk dose up. If you are dosing the fixed ratio amounts that the ReefBeat app is recommending then Alk will rise on its own. I found that Alk usually sat at about 9.0 while using the 4-part system.

Are you using the doser as well, or manually dosing?

Thanks for the info - I'm using the redsea 4-pump dosing kit.... so neat and tidy.