Tropic Marin All-For-Reef Q's and Worries

[Waynerock]

What size is your tank

65ish gallons

 

[Cbones1979]

65ish gallons

Ok. I have a 45 and using powder. Can’t really get it stabilized yet and dosing 9 ml per day as the calculator says on their site. I need to bump up slowly I guess each week until it stabilizes. Went from 8.5 down to 7.7 over a few days. I still have kalk in ato and I’ve had to dump some 2 part in so it didn’t get too low

 

[Waynerock]

Just take it slow and you will get there. It took me almost a month to get mine dialed in. It can take up to 2 and a half days to see the AFR start working or see the increase

 

[Cbones1979]

Just take it slow and you will get there. It took me almost a month to get mine dialed in. It can take up to 2 and a half days to see the AFR start working or see the increase

Using Hanna went from 7.4 to 8.5 today

 

[Waynerock]

Using Hanna went from 7.4 to 8.5 today

That’s good now just dial it In and keep it around there. 8.5 is a great middle of the road number. Play it safe, I keep mine at 8.7 and the tank loves it

 

[Cbones1979]

That’s good now just dial it In and keep it around there. 8.5 is a great middle of the road number. Play it safe, I keep mine at 8.7 and the tank loves it

Looks great. My salt is 8.5 so that’s what I’m trying to keep it at.

 

[CavalierReef]

Yea I stopped and everything went back to normal. There seems to be a lot of bacteria dosing lately and I got caught up in it although Vibrant worked great for me. I am just a locksmith so yea kinda hard question to ask without sounding like an idiot. Once stability is established the tank almost goes on auto pilot, AFR makes that so simple. Can’t wait for this it looks to save me about 10 bucks a month at least.

Please don't ever refer to yourself as "just a locksmith". You guys have saved my butt many times over the years. And, back to the post. I too love AFR in my 32 Biocube.

 

[Waynerock]

Please don't ever refer to yourself as "just a locksmith". You guys have saved my butt many times over the years. And, back to the post. I too love AFR in my 32 Biocube.

Appreciate the comment I do what I can and quite honestly I would rather have this job than any other job it’s always something different I love working with my hands and we save people in my town a lot of money with our vehicle keys and programming. How much are you dosing in your biocube! I really wish I didn’t get rid of my 32 I had they are such awesome little tanks

 

[131696]

Time to frag ,green montipora will die to shadow of other montipora ,corals touching corals taking over Frag time.. ALK and calcium lots of it make corals grow faster In your case,slow down the speed of coral growth if you keep going like some corals will die your tank is to full .your green stick sps coral is also getting overtaken.Slow down the growth don't need to grow anymore.just frag you will have 2 in a few months anyway.or you need a bigger tank.

 

[freezie]

I’m dosing 32ml daily to my “29”gal BioCube. You can go ahead and dose more. Just not a radical amount. I dose more than the recommendation.

Love the diy light mount

 

[Jgoal55]

Came across this thread just now as I started AFR about three weeks ago and was googling. Saw a lot of posts that AFR dropped ALK. In my case it had opposite effect.

My dKH started at 8.8 and was at 9.8 5 days ago so I stopped dosing AFR 5 days ago. Today, I’m still at 9.8. Tank is a 24g coral QT and I only have about 9 SPS frags, one large space invader, and a few zoas.

My question is: the instructions say to dose until you reach 7 to 9. Does that mean stop dosing altogether when you reach that range until it drops again or do you all just decrease the dosage and maintain a constant dosing schedule based on ALK consumption?

if the latter, is there a calculator for how much AFR to dose based on a tanks ALK consumption?

 

[ZombieEngineer]

Deleted

 

[ZombieEngineer]

Came across this thread just now as I started AFR about three weeks ago and was googling. Saw a lot of posts that AFR dropped ALK. In my case it had opposite effect.

My dKH started at 8.8 and was at 9.8 5 days ago so I stopped dosing AFR 5 days ago. Today, I’m still at 9.8. Tank is a 24g coral QT and I only have about 9 SPS frags, one large space invader, and a few zoas.

My question is: the instructions say to dose until you reach 7 to 9. Does that mean stop dosing altogether when you reach that range until it drops again or do you all just decrease the dosage and maintain a constant dosing schedule based on ALK consumption?

if the latter, is there a calculator for how much AFR to dose based on a tanks ALK consumption?

5ml of AFR will raise 26g by 0.3dKH. You dose based on that amount once you have accurately determined your consumption.

 

[undermind]

You don't ever want to stop dosing it in my opinion. You'll want to make adjustments to your ongoing dosage.

I'll bet your Alk consumption will be on the move in that frag tank. And I think Tropic Marin has kind of gotten away from using a consumption-based method for finding a starting dose or to achieving an Alk target.

In general terms, you just want to increase your dose if your Alk tests below your target or decrease if it tests above.

If I feel like I'm pretty dialed in with my dose, I feel comfortable testing Alk weekly because the shift will be minimal to non existent as long as I'm not creating an upward or downward trend. If it feels a little unstable or another factor in the tank may be impacting Alk aside from consumption, I'll test every few days or twice a week.

I don't recall what this AFR thread covers but I'm sure there's mention of the delay in time it takes for Alk changes to show up in tests. Due to that, you just don't want to make a change in dose then test same day or even next day with the hopes of seeing the results. If you want to test more often (daily) you can but I think that works best if your AFR dosage is around the clock or at the same time every day and you test at the same time every day.

EDIT: I see now that Tropic Marin has the calculator back up on their site. That was gone for a while and was not available when I started using it on 2 different tanks. I think the calculator can be confusing in the real world, at least it seems that way because people don't seem to get the results they expect. My advice is to start with a dose, and simply adjust up or down until it stays stable and at your Alk target. And don't stress.

 

[Jgoal55]

5ml of AFR will raise 26g by 0.3dKH. You dose based on that amount once you have accurately determined your consumption.

You don't ever want to stop dosing it in my opinion. You'll want to make adjustments to your ongoing dosage.

I'll bet your Alk consumption will be on the move in that frag tank. And I think Tropic Marin has kind of gotten away from using a consumption-based method for finding a starting dose or to achieving an Alk target.

In general terms, you just want to increase your dose if your Alk tests below your target or decrease if it tests above.

If I feel like I'm pretty dialed in with my dose, I feel comfortable testing Alk weekly because the shift will be minimal to non existent as long as I'm not creating an upward or downward trend. If it feels a little unstable or another factor in the tank may be impacting Alk aside from consumption, I'll test every few days or twice a week.

I don't recall what this AFR thread covers but I'm sure there's mention of the delay in time it takes for Alk changes to show up in tests. Due to that, you just don't want to make a change in dose then test same day or even next day with the hopes of seeing the results. If you want to test more often (daily) you can but I think that works best if your AFR dosage is around the clock or at the same time every day and you test at the same time every day.

EDIT: I see now that Tropic Marin has the calculator back up on their site. That was gone for a while and was not available when I started using it on 2 different tanks. I think the calculator can be confusing in the real world, at least it seems that way because people don't seem to get the results they expect. My advice is to start with a dose, and simply adjust up or down until it stays stable and at your Alk target. And don't stress.

Awesome! Thanks for the info!