RedSea Reef Care Program vs ZEOvit

rbraunberger · Apr 4, 2016

Hello all,

I am looking at using one of these systems for my next tank. Any advice? What do you see as the positives/negatives of each system? Long term costs? Any info at all! Thanks everyone!!

dbl · Apr 8, 2016

When it came time to dosing, I opted to go with the Red Sea Reef Care Program. I set up dosing pumps to handle the big three, as well as the colors. Although I have nothing to compare it to, I've had great success with the program. I realize it's more costly, but I actually buy the pre-mixed alk/cal/mag because I simply don't want to mess with mixing them. Could save quite a bit by doing so, but I'm paying for the convenience.

Having said all this, I have no proof that it's better than any other program. It's what I started using, have had success, and now quite honestly I'm afraid to change! So this isn't probably much help, just my experience with RS.

This is one of those questions that has the possibility to garner a bunch of different answers, so let's see if this bump gets a few more responses.

rbraunberger · Apr 10, 2016

dbl said:
When it came time to dosing, I opted to go with the Red Sea Reef Care Program. I set up dosing pumps to handle the big three, as well as the colors. Although I have nothing to compare it to, I've had great success with the program. I realize it's more costly, but I actually buy the pre-mixed alk/cal/mag because I simply don't want to mess with mixing them. Could save quite a bit by doing so, but I'm paying for the convenience.

Having said all this, I have no proof that it's better than any other program. It's what I started using, have had success, and now quite honestly I'm afraid to change! So this isn't probably much help, just my experience with RS.

This is one of those questions that has the possibility to garner a bunch of different answers, so let's see if this bump gets a few more responses.

Do you run a refug with the NOPO-X?

Jstn · Apr 10, 2016

I ran zeovit, and honestly did not like how the instructions were written and found myself looking to others to help me. It seemed like a guarded system with some guru telling you to add one less drop of mystery bottle x a day to fix your rtn. I never liked the stones or the reactor and found no matter what I couldn't tune in the nutrient levels as easier as I could before with just vinegar dosing. The fact I couldn't get results and found myself lusting after the next blue bottle of snake oil cure to fix my tank at $50 a pop that required almost as much forum time as the bottles required dosing ultimately led my to break this blue bottle addiction. After that I quit, went to instant ocean with the big three via brs and and vinegar dosing. After a few months I finally saw growth and the colors were never that great on my Sps. So one day I decide to try the Red Sea trace elements program with the reef engery ab. They sold a little pack of both and I think it cost me $40 total. Starting to dose the trace elements weekly, 10ml for a 100 gal system and within two weeks my chaeto starting talking off, my red Sps got more metallic in color along with my pink lemonade. I also was dosing the reef energy ab (10 ml each once a day) and noticed better polyp extension on my Sps and my acans were much fuller. In addition I saw my Sps start to finally grow, and stopped with oyster feast. With these results I switched over to their rscp salt and stopped dosing mg cause cause my levels became solid (io is low in mg). After my first water change everything puffed up and looked great. Subsequent water changes kept improving my colors and my chaeto was still growing like weeds. Previously my chaeto barely grew (pre Redsea) and now I'm trimming it weekly which i think is from dosing iron in their trace elements. I have been very happy with my results along with the prices and the fact they at transparent about the contents. As a scientist I hate not knowing what's really in the stuff and the fact zeovit potassium iodine is $50 a bottle when it cost them penny's to make is infuriating.

I know many people have great results with Instant ocean but I feel the results were less than optimal in my system, the same with zeovit, but I rather buy Sps then trendy blue bottles and after dumping almost 1k into the system I felt cheated. I feel Redsea has a good system that's very simple and very affordable. I do still use brs two part but started adding 1% SrCl into my mix mimicking the Redsea two part and found acans need strontium to stay puffy anecdotally.

These are my results, I hope it gave you some insight.

rbraunberger · Apr 10, 2016

Jstn said:
I ran zeovit, and honestly did not like how the instructions were written and found myself looking to others to help me. It seemed like a guarded system with some guru telling you to add one less drop of mystery bottle x a day to fix your rtn. I never liked the stones or the reactor and found no matter what I couldn't tune in the nutrient levels as easier as I could before with just vinegar dosing. The fact I couldn't get results and found myself lusting after the next blue bottle of snake oil cure to fix my tank at $50 a pop that required almost as much forum time as the bottles required dosing ultimately led my to break this blue bottle addiction. After that I quit, went to instant ocean with the big three via brs and and vinegar dosing. After a few months I finally saw growth and the colors were never that great on my Sps. So one day I decide to try the Red Sea trace elements program with the reef engery ab. They sold a little pack of both and I think it cost me $40 total. Starting to dose the trace elements weekly, 10ml for a 100 gal system and within two weeks my chaeto starting talking off, my red Sps got more metallic in color along with my pink lemonade. I also was dosing the reef energy ab (10 ml each once a day) and noticed better polyp extension on my Sps and my acans were much fuller. In addition I saw my Sps start to finally grow, and stopped with oyster feast. With these results I switched over to their rscp salt and stopped dosing mg cause cause my levels became solid (io is low in mg). After my first water change everything puffed up and looked great. Subsequent water changes kept improving my colors and my chaeto was still growing like weeds. Previously my chaeto barely grew (pre Redsea) and now I'm trimming it weekly which i think is from dosing iron in their trace elements. I have been very happy with my results along with the prices and the fact they at transparent about the contents. As a scientist I hate not knowing what's really in the stuff and the fact zeovit potassium iodine is $50 a bottle when it cost them penny's to make is infuriating.

I know many people have great results with Instant ocean but I feel the results were less than optimal in my system, the same with zeovit, but I rather buy Sps then trendy blue bottles and after dumping almost 1k into the system I felt cheated. I feel Redsea has a good system that's very simple and very affordable. I do still use brs two part but started adding 1% SrCl into my mix mimicking the Redsea two part and found acans need strontium to stay puffy anecdotally.

These are my results, I hope it gave you some insight.

Thank you for the reply! I think I am going redsea with dosing pumps galore :). How are you adding SrCl to you 2 part? Brand/method?

rbraunberger · Apr 10, 2016

Jstn said:
I ran zeovit, and honestly did not like how the instructions were written and found myself looking to others to help me. It seemed like a guarded system with some guru telling you to add one less drop of mystery bottle x a day to fix your rtn. I never liked the stones or the reactor and found no matter what I couldn't tune in the nutrient levels as easier as I could before with just vinegar dosing. The fact I couldn't get results and found myself lusting after the next blue bottle of snake oil cure to fix my tank at $50 a pop that required almost as much forum time as the bottles required dosing ultimately led my to break this blue bottle addiction. After that I quit, went to instant ocean with the big three via brs and and vinegar dosing. After a few months I finally saw growth and the colors were never that great on my Sps. So one day I decide to try the Red Sea trace elements program with the reef engery ab. They sold a little pack of both and I think it cost me $40 total. Starting to dose the trace elements weekly, 10ml for a 100 gal system and within two weeks my chaeto starting talking off, my red Sps got more metallic in color along with my pink lemonade. I also was dosing the reef energy ab (10 ml each once a day) and noticed better polyp extension on my Sps and my acans were much fuller. In addition I saw my Sps start to finally grow, and stopped with oyster feast. With these results I switched over to their rscp salt and stopped dosing mg cause cause my levels became solid (io is low in mg). After my first water change everything puffed up and looked great. Subsequent water changes kept improving my colors and my chaeto was still growing like weeds. Previously my chaeto barely grew (pre Redsea) and now I'm trimming it weekly which i think is from dosing iron in their trace elements. I have been very happy with my results along with the prices and the fact they at transparent about the contents. As a scientist I hate not knowing what's really in the stuff and the fact zeovit potassium iodine is $50 a bottle when it cost them penny's to make is infuriating.

I know many people have great results with Instant ocean but I feel the results were less than optimal in my system, the same with zeovit, but I rather buy Sps then trendy blue bottles and after dumping almost 1k into the system I felt cheated. I feel Redsea has a good system that's very simple and very affordable. I do still use brs two part but started adding 1% SrCl into my mix mimicking the Redsea two part and found acans need strontium to stay puffy anecdotally.

These are my results, I hope it gave you some insight.

Also, do you dose the NOPO-X?

Jstn · Apr 10, 2016

No, I use vinegar though I think nopox is methanol, someone ran an NMR of it. So red sea calcium additive comes with 1-5% SrCl mixed in (read the msds, another reason I love reds seas transparency) so I have a giant brs CaCl bucket, so I just add 1% by mass of bright wells SrCl power. I was going to dose the colors via dosing pump, I have an extra bm02 slave doser, but I figured I might just add it biweekly, 5 mLs of each solution twice a week. The extra clutter and over complication of adding 1 mL a day plus the fact the doser isn't that accurate, I might just manually keep dosing.

rbraunberger · Apr 10, 2016

Jstn said:
No, I use vinegar though I think nopox is methanol, someone ran an NMR of it. So red sea calcium additive comes with 1-5% SrCl mixed in (read the msds, another reason I love reds seas transparency) so I have a giant brs CaCl bucket, so I just add 1% by mass of bright wells SrCl power. I was going to dose the colors via dosing pump, I have an extra bm02 slave doser, but I figured I might just add it biweekly, 5 mLs of each solution twice a week. The extra clutter and over complication of adding 1 mL a day plus the fact the doser isn't that accurate, I might just manually keep dosing.

nice...thanks for the info