Salt Mix Selection Chemistry vs. Additives

[stcroixohana]

Hi.
I've been keeping a FOWLR system for 7 months, more heartbreak then triumph but I think I'm getting my s*** together will enough to have some success here, long term
I just introduced a few zoa's and some Xenia to stay feeling out coral and to see how my system will support coral without much more than frequent water changes, decent husbandry, and kalk dosing through my ATO.
Yeah, I've watched a bazillion hours of YouTube videos and read all the articles about chemistry, trace minerals, salinity, alk, parameters etc. Naturally, I have myself convinced that I need to be constantly pumping a bunch of foreign substances into my system in order to support coral life and keep everything stable and well attended to keep corals alive and thriving.
The gentleman I bought my frags from went ahead and informed me that he doses with absolutely nothing, he uses no additional additives whatsoever, and simply uses good salt with pharmaceutical grade elements and does 20% water changes weekly in order to keep parameters all topped up.
Here's my question: is all the chatter regarding the need for all of these additional additives and Trace elements and everything that makes my wife think we're going to go broke keeping a simple reef aquarium kinda BS? I asked this with the assumption that this gentleman had two of the most perfectly stocked reef tanks, all mixed Reef, that I'd seen personally when was adamant about staying away from additives and dosing and just staying disciplined about water change schedules with a good salt mix.
Is this the case? Quite honestly I've used historically whatever salt I could afford or justify purchasing but I'm perfectly content to increase the quality of the salt I'm using in order to avoid the need to convince myself I need a bunch of additional unnecessary additives in order to have a stable environment to keep some coals living and hopefully thriving so I myself can one day have a stellar mixed Reef system.
Any insight is appreciated

 

[mdb_talon]

No i do not think the need for trace elements is BS. That does not however mean you need to dose trace elements for a successful tank. There are lots of factors involved. Amount of coral, types of coral, whether you do WC or not(and how much), which element you are talking about,etc.

Personally i have had a huge improvement since i started dosing trace elements(mostly with color) However thats on my 250g frag tank that i dont really do WC on. Of i did frequent water changes i bet the difference would have been smaller or possibly nonexistent. On my 60g DT i dont dose anything other than calc/alk/mg and do about 20% biweekly and it seems to be plenty.

 

[homer1475]

I do weekly 10% WC, and dose ALK, and CAL. Thats it to my 80G mixed reef.

FWIW, I use regular old purple box IO. Corals are colorful, and growing. This has more to do with nutrient levels, and lighting. What more do you want?

I find all that micro dosing this and that to be complete BS, and only anecdotal evidence it even works.

I think if you polled long time reefer on what they do, you'll find we all pretty much subscribe to the KISS method(simple WC's with ALK, CAL, and MAG dosing, possibly KALK in the ATO). When you start making your tank a science project, is when most people tend to start having issues.

Pic of tank for reference:

 

[Just a Wrasse.]

No i do not think the need for trace elements is BS. That does not however mean you need to dose trace elements for a successful tank. There are lots of factors involved. Amount of coral, types of coral, whether you do WC or not(and how much), which element you are talking about,etc.

Personally i have had a huge improvement since i started dosing trace elements(mostly with color) However thats on my 250g frag tank that i dont really do WC on. Of i did frequent water changes i bet the difference would have been smaller or possibly nonexistent. On my 60g DT i dont dose anything other than calc/alk/mg and do about 20% biweekly and it seems to be plenty.

Agreed.

 

[Just a Wrasse.]

What he said is very well true, but yes you would need to use a salt with special elements. I recommend red sea coral pro salt. Also this severely matters on coral and how sensitive it is.

 

[Darren in Tacoma]

When you do a water change you remove some bad and replace with good. The problem with this is that it becomes expensive on a large system. I used Salinity on a 29gal cube with much success, dosing very little, for years.

If you want to skip dosing you will need to stock your tank with corals that are not too demanding, basically softies, which can be beautiful and grow quickly. You also need appropriate lighting. You already are dosing kalk, so you should be pretty good.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Here's my question: is all the chatter regarding the need for all of these additional additives and Trace elements and everything that makes my wife think we're going to go broke keeping a simple reef aquarium kinda BS?

It is not BS, but it also is not salt mix dependent. All salt mixes have trace elements. None are dramatically deficient.

Some ions, such as iron and manganese are pretty rapidly depleted.

 

[stcroixohana]

I do weekly 10% WC, and dose ALK, and CAL. Thats it to my 80G mixed reef.

FWIW, I use regular old purple box IO. Corals are colorful, and growing. This has more to do with nutrient levels, and lighting. What more do you want?

I find all that micro dosing this and that to be complete BS, and only anecdotal evidence it even works.

I think if you polled long time reefer on what they do, you'll find we all pretty much subscribe to the KISS method(simple WC's with ALK, CAL, and MAG dosing, possibly KALK in the ATO). When you start making your tank a science project, is when most people tend to start having issues.

Pic of tank for reference:

On the level, this is what I was hoping to read. I don't want my tank and community to be too dependent on too much outside dosing.
My plan is to keep with 20% WC/weekly wyn Reef Crystals and keep the ATO with kalkwasser to keep calcium and carbon in check.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

On the level, this is what I was hoping to read. I don't want my tank and community to be too dependent on too much outside dosing.
My plan is to keep with 20% WC/weekly wyn Reef Crystals and keep the ATO with kalkwasser to keep calcium and carbon in check.

In my case of doing nearly the same thing, some elements were not maintained at natural levels.