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
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