Hi all!
Any suggestions on what I should do/not do or what's best to dose to get these parameters to where they should be? (my stats & story are below)
My tank is cycled about 5 months now, with dry sand & rock. No corals yet, 2 fish and a half dozen snails & hermits. I do weekly 10% water changes with RODI, using RedSea Blue bucket salt. I have a filter chamber with Purigen and ChemiPure Blue, and run my skimmer 24/7.
I've been adding baking soda little by little to keep my Alkalinity stable, but it drops to the high 5's/low 6's if I don't add. My Calcium is also low, and I finally did a Magnesium test and it came back low too:
Alkalinity: around 8 (with baking soda) tested with both Salifert kit and Elos kit
Calcium: 336 tested with Hanna checker
Calcium: 230 tested with RedSea tester
Magnesium: 1110 tested with Salifert kit
pH: 8.2 tested with RedSea test kit
Phosphate: .01 tested with RedSea test kit
Salinity: 1.025
Temp: 77F
I don't have any dosing tools like a Trident. But any suggestions on what I should do/not do or what's best to dose to get these parameters to where they should be, so I can start thinking about adding corals?
And while I'm here I have been getting brown hair algae on my rocks and glass, nothing overtaking the tank but it doesn't scrub off my rocks so I don't believe it's diatoms. Guessing this is due to my low Phosphate?
Any suggestions on what I should do/not do or what's best to dose to get these parameters to where they should be? (my stats & story are below)
My tank is cycled about 5 months now, with dry sand & rock. No corals yet, 2 fish and a half dozen snails & hermits. I do weekly 10% water changes with RODI, using RedSea Blue bucket salt. I have a filter chamber with Purigen and ChemiPure Blue, and run my skimmer 24/7.
I've been adding baking soda little by little to keep my Alkalinity stable, but it drops to the high 5's/low 6's if I don't add. My Calcium is also low, and I finally did a Magnesium test and it came back low too:
Alkalinity: around 8 (with baking soda) tested with both Salifert kit and Elos kit
Calcium: 336 tested with Hanna checker
Calcium: 230 tested with RedSea tester
Magnesium: 1110 tested with Salifert kit
pH: 8.2 tested with RedSea test kit
Phosphate: .01 tested with RedSea test kit
Salinity: 1.025
Temp: 77F
I don't have any dosing tools like a Trident. But any suggestions on what I should do/not do or what's best to dose to get these parameters to where they should be, so I can start thinking about adding corals?
And while I'm here I have been getting brown hair algae on my rocks and glass, nothing overtaking the tank but it doesn't scrub off my rocks so I don't believe it's diatoms. Guessing this is due to my low Phosphate?