Struggling keeping my magnesium levels up

goaltenderforlife

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I'm kind of lost at this point. My magnesium levels will not increase. I have a 13.5 gallon tank. For salt, I use Aquavitro Salinity and mix with RO water to 1.026. For dosing, I use All for Reef and Aquavitro Ions (magnesium). I dose 3ml daily of AFR and about 4ml of Ions daily. The tank also as a decent amount of macro algae growth that I believe to be Dragon's breath. I am currently dealing with a green hair algae or turf algea. I am dosing almost 7ml daily and I feel like this is a decent amount of dosing per day. I want to increase more but I am nervous about killing some of the corals as well as the snails.

My latest parameters are: pH - 8.0 , Kh - 8.4 , Mg - 1280, Ca - 390, Phos - 0.03, Nitrate - 8.

My tank's stock: Yellow watchmen, pistol shrimp, cleaner shrimp, 5 ceriths, 1 emerald crab, 3 astrea, 9 zoo frags, green hairy mushroom, 2 cyphastrea, 6 scans, 1 hammer, 1 frogspawn (2 heads), GSP, and a rhodactis.
 

Drummingbaker2010

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Your calcium looks low, you will want to bring up your calcium to between 400-600. for algae control, you will want to do some water changes, and it sounds like you need more of a clean-up crew than just snails. some hermit crabs, cleaner or peppermint shrimp, an urchin or maybe an emerald crab sound like they might help you out with that as well. I'm not sure why the magnesium isn't balancing out. Are you running a protein skimmer? Maybe that will help too.
 

theMeat

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Macro will consume magnesium. Althou to me it sounds like your test results may be off
 

nereefpat

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1280 ppm of Mg is higher than seawater. What is your target? It takes quite a bit of liquid Mg to raise levels, and our test kits are +/- 30 ppm at best.
 

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