I have watched the reef dude videos where the different Tropic Marin carbon dosing products are discussed. And I get that there are 4 or 5 different products for different situations but I am still not sure I fully understand what each product will do for me.
I'll start off by describing my tank.
Red Sea reefer 350
Mainly SPS dominated with a few LPS.
8x 54w ATI T5 lights
Alk around aimed to be kept at 8 DKH
Nitrates are above 10 but this is because I started dosing nitrates. If I don't dose it is undetectable on a red sea pro test kit.
Phosphates are around 0.12 to 0.1 but it's hard to tell.
I run a Clarisea SK3000 and a UV sterilizer on this tank and a slightly oversized skimmer.
I used to dose carbocalcium with trace but the consumption of this was over 120ml per day and it was continually going up so I suspected something wasn't right and switched to a calcium reactor. I am still in process of deciding if this was a good or bad decision as I now have low ph issues.
My tank grows a lot of hair algae on the back wall glass because I can't really scrape it off. There is very little coraline growth due to the hair algae. There is not a lot of hair algae growing on my rock work thankfully. The tank was started with mature dead rock and some live rock from another tank and it has been running for a little over a year now.
I suffer from both Cyano and dino's in this tank but neither is out of control. I had a large cyano outbreak 4 months ago that I could not beat so I resorted to chemiclean which obliterated it and I then started dosing the nitrates. The dinos just kinda hang's around but never fully takes over or fully goes away hence the UV steralizer. There are traces of cyano and dinos currently but you have to look hard to see it.
I suspect there is a lack of bio-diversity bacteria-wise in my tank and that is why I am having these issues. I don't want to increase my nutrients more as they are already too high and will just feed the hair algae and every time I try to reduce the nutrients I get cyano and dinos. I find this extremely frustrating. Ideally, I would like my nitrates to be around 1-2ppm and my phosphates around 0.4 to 0.6. I have reduced the dose of nitrates but it's taking a while to come down.
I think one or two of the carbon dosing products could help me with this but I am not sure which ones or how to really apply it to get to and maintain the aforementioned numbers. I have used Red Sea's Nopox in the past and it reduced nitrates to zero virtually overnight but had absolutely no impact whatsoever on phosphate levels.
Is reef Reef Actif aimed at reducing nutrients or is it aimed at feeding coral? What will this product do for me in black and white terms?
The same with Bacto-balance?
I'll start off by describing my tank.
Red Sea reefer 350
Mainly SPS dominated with a few LPS.
8x 54w ATI T5 lights
Alk around aimed to be kept at 8 DKH
Nitrates are above 10 but this is because I started dosing nitrates. If I don't dose it is undetectable on a red sea pro test kit.
Phosphates are around 0.12 to 0.1 but it's hard to tell.
I run a Clarisea SK3000 and a UV sterilizer on this tank and a slightly oversized skimmer.
I used to dose carbocalcium with trace but the consumption of this was over 120ml per day and it was continually going up so I suspected something wasn't right and switched to a calcium reactor. I am still in process of deciding if this was a good or bad decision as I now have low ph issues.
My tank grows a lot of hair algae on the back wall glass because I can't really scrape it off. There is very little coraline growth due to the hair algae. There is not a lot of hair algae growing on my rock work thankfully. The tank was started with mature dead rock and some live rock from another tank and it has been running for a little over a year now.
I suffer from both Cyano and dino's in this tank but neither is out of control. I had a large cyano outbreak 4 months ago that I could not beat so I resorted to chemiclean which obliterated it and I then started dosing the nitrates. The dinos just kinda hang's around but never fully takes over or fully goes away hence the UV steralizer. There are traces of cyano and dinos currently but you have to look hard to see it.
I suspect there is a lack of bio-diversity bacteria-wise in my tank and that is why I am having these issues. I don't want to increase my nutrients more as they are already too high and will just feed the hair algae and every time I try to reduce the nutrients I get cyano and dinos. I find this extremely frustrating. Ideally, I would like my nitrates to be around 1-2ppm and my phosphates around 0.4 to 0.6. I have reduced the dose of nitrates but it's taking a while to come down.
I think one or two of the carbon dosing products could help me with this but I am not sure which ones or how to really apply it to get to and maintain the aforementioned numbers. I have used Red Sea's Nopox in the past and it reduced nitrates to zero virtually overnight but had absolutely no impact whatsoever on phosphate levels.
Is reef Reef Actif aimed at reducing nutrients or is it aimed at feeding coral? What will this product do for me in black and white terms?
The same with Bacto-balance?